Cristina Garcia with Achy Obejas, Carlos Pintado & Legna Rodriguez Iglesias

“García, a transcendentally imaginative, piquantly satiric, and profoundly compassionate novelist, dramatizes the helter-skelter of lives ruptured by tyranny, war, and political upheavals with sharp awareness of unlikely multicultural alliances . . . With echoes of W. G. Sebald and Günter Grass, García has created an intricate, sensitive, and provocative montage revolving around the question: ‘Do people remember only what they can endure, or distort memories until they can endure them?'” ―Booklist (starred review)

Here in Berlin is a portrait of a city through snapshots, an excavation of the stories and ghosts of contemporary Berlin―its complex, troubled past still pulsing in the air as it was during World War II. Critically acclaimed novelist Cristina García brings the people of this famed city to life, their stories bristling with regret, desire, and longing.

An unnamed Visitor travels to Berlin with a camera looking for reckonings of her own. The city itself is a character―vibrant and postapocalyptic, flat and featureless except for its rivers, its lakes, its legions of bicyclists. Here in Berlin she encounters a people’s history: the Cuban teen taken as a POW on a German submarine only to return home to a family who doesn’t believe him; the young Jewish scholar hidden in a sarcophagus until safe passage to England is found; the female lawyer haunted by a childhood of deprivation in the bombed-out suburbs of Berlin who still defends those accused of war crimes; a young nurse with a checkered past who joins the Reich at a medical facility more intent to dispense with the wounded than to heal them; and the son of a zookeeper at the Berlin Zoo, fighting to keep the animals safe from both war and an increasingly starving populace.

A meditation on war and mystery, this an exciting new work by one of our most gifted novelists, one that seeks to align the stories of the past with the stories of the future.

About the Author:

Cristina García is the author of seven novels, including: Dreaming in Cuban―a Finalist for the National Book Award whose 25th Anniversary edition is coming in March 2017―The Agüero Sisters, Monkey Hunting, A Handbook to Luck, The Lady Matador’s Hotel, and King of Cuba. García has edited two anthologies, Cubanísimo: The Vintage Book of Contemporary Cuban Literature and Bordering Fires: The Vintage Book of Contemporary Mexican and Chicano/a Literature. García’s work has been translated into fourteen languages. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Writers’ Award, a Hodder Fellowship at Princeton University, and an NEA grant, among others. García has taught at universities nationwide. Recently, she completed her tenure as University Chair in Creative Writing at Texas State University-San Marcos and as Visiting Professor at the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas-Austin. She lives in the San Francisco Bay area.

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With participation by Achy Obejas, Carlos Pintado and Legna Rodriguez Iglesias

 ACHY OBEJAS is the author of the critically acclaimed novels Ruins, Days of Awe, and three other books of fiction. She edited and translated (into English) the anthology Havana Noir, and has since translated Junot Díaz, Rita Indiana, Wendy Guerra, and many others. In 2014, she was awarded a USA Ford Fellowship for her writing and translation. She currently serves as the Director of the MFA in Translation program at Mills College in Oakland, California.

CARLOS PINTADO is a Cuban–American writer, playwright and Award-winning poet who immigrated to the United States in the early 90’s. He is the recipient of the 2014 Paz Prize for Poetry for his book Nine Coins/Nueve Monedas, translated from the original Spanish by Hilary Vaughn Dobel,  awarded by the National Poetry Series and the MDCC Center for Literature and published in a bilingual edition by Akashic Books.

LEGNA RODRÍGUEZ IGLESIAS won the 2011 Premio Iberoamericano de Cuentos Julio Cortázar and the 2016 Premio Literario Casa de Las Américas, in theater. She is the author of the poetry collections Hilo + Hilo, Dame Spray, Transtucé, and Chicle (ahora es cuando). Her other titles include the novels Las analfabetas, Mayonesa bien brillante, and Mi novia preferida fue un bulldog francés, as well as the short story collection No sabe/no contesta. She is the recipient of 2017 Paz Prize for Poetry for her latest collection, Miami Century Fox.