The Storyteller gathers for the first time the fiction of the legendary critic and philosopher Walter Benjamin, best known for his groundbreaking studies of culture and literature, including Illuminations, One-Way Street and The Arcades Project. His stories revel in the erotic tensions of city life, cross the threshold between rational and hallucinatory realms, celebrate the importance of games, and delve into the peculiar relationship between gambling a...

An investigation of the cultures and technologies of early radio and how a generation of cultural operators—with Schoen at the center—addressed crisis and adversity.Dials, knobs, microphones, clocks; heads, hands, breath, voices. Ernst Schoen joined Frankfurt Radio in the 1920s as programmer and accelerated the potentials of this collision of bodies and technologies. As with others of his generation, Schoen experienced crisis after crisis, from the violence of war,...

THE TIMES TOP 10 BESTSELLER***SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION******SHORTLISTED FOR THE BRITISH ACADEMY BOOK PRIZE******SHORTLISTED FOR THE CUNDILL HISTORY PRIZE***A Book of the YearThe Times * Sunday Times * Telegraph * New Statesman * Financial Times * Irish Independent * Daily Mail...

'The story in this book is so gripping and fascinating that it is remarkable that it has never been told in this way before' Simon Heffer, Literary Review'Masterly ... His writing is brisk, confident and colourful ... a pleasure to read' Sunday TelegraphThe true story of a one-handed pianist and the fall of his aristocratic familyThe Wittgenstein family was one of the richest, most talented and most...

Twenty years in the making, this sweeping masterpiece charts Berlin through the rise of Nazism.During the past two decades, Jason Lutes has quietly created one of the masterworks of the graphic novel golden age. Berlin is one of the high-water marks of the medium: rich in its well-researched historical detail, compassionate in its character studies, and as timely as ever in its depiction of a society slowly awakening to the stranglehold of fascism....

The extraordinary true story of the Stasi's poetry club: Stasiland and The Lives of Others crossed with Dead Poets Society .'A magnificent book . . . at once touching, exquisite, devastating and extraordinary.'PHILIPPE SANDS, author of East West Street and The Ratline'A vivid, funny, and imperturbable portrait of Soviet Russia's most loyal satellite.'NELL Z...

In 1996, in the middle of watching an ill-tempered football match between England and Germany, Philip Oltermann's parents tell him that they are going to leave their home city Hamburg behind and move to London.Inspired by his own experience of both countries, Philip Oltermann looks at eight historical encounters between English and German people from the last two hundred years: Helmut Kohl tries to explain German cuisine to the Iron Lady, the Mini plays catch-up with the Volkswagen...

This chronicle of renowned composer Richard Wagner and his descendants features "a cast of characters who are positively operatic in their histrionics" ( The Guardian).Richard Wagner was many things—composer, philosopher, philanderer, failed revolutionary, and virulent anti-Semite—and his descendants have carried on his complex legacy.In his "lively and wry" history of the legendary composer and his family, biographer Jonathan Carr also offers fasc...

A SPECTATOR, NEW STATESMAN AND THE TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR'The best biography I have read in years' Philippe Sands'Spectacular' Observer**'A remarkable portrait'**GuardianW. G. Sebald was one of the most extraordinary and influential writers of the twentieth century. Through books including The E...

The gripping account of one historian's hunt for answers as he delves into the surprising life of an ordinary Nazi officer.'Totally exhilarating' Philippe SandsIt began with an armchair. It began with the surprise discovery of a stash of personal documents covered in swastikas sewn into its cushion.The SS Officer's Armchair is the story of what happened next, as Daniel Lee follows the trail of cold calls, documents, coincid...

Hans Fallada was a drug addict, womanizer, alcoholic, jailbird and thief. Yet he was also one of the most extraordinary storytellers of the twentieth century, whose novels, including Alone in Berlin, portrayed ordinary people in terrible times with a powerful humanity.This acclaimed biography, newly revised and completely updated, tells the remarkable story of Hans Fallada, whose real name was Rudolf Ditzen. Jenny Williams chronicles his turbulent life as a writer, husband...