Berlin in British Fiction - Einzelansicht

All through the 20^thcentury and beyond, British writers have been fascinated and inspired by the cultural, political and aesthetic radicalism and the multi-layered historical complications they perceived as typical of Berlin. Our seminar will address some of the most influential representations of Germany’s capital city in British writing from Christopher Isherwood’s documentary sketches of the last days of the Weimar Republic in his Goodbye to Berlin (1939) to Ian McEwan’s Cold War espionage thriller The Innocent (1990) and Philipp Hensher’s fall-of-the-wall fantasy, Pleasured (1998). 21^st-century gentrified and touristy Berlin will be addressed in our concluding analyses of Chloe Aridjis’s Book of Clouds (2009).

The seminar aims to produce a collaborative and interactive literary map of Berlin based on the representations of the city in the four novels. The map will be worked out in cooperation with the university’s Digital Humanities Centre and, moreover, in collaboration with a group of peer students at the University of Delhi who will read the same novels as we do and will undertake a four-week field trip to Potsdam and Berlin in June, when they will also take part in our seminar sessions.

Christopher Isherwood, Goodbye to Berlin

Ian McEwan, The Innocent

Philipp Hensher, Pleasured

Chloe Ardijis, Book of Clouds

3 CPs for regular and active participation and an assigned contribution to the literary Berlin map