Description

Berlin is one of the high-water marks of the comics medium. For twenty years, Jason Lutes toiled on this intimate, sweeping epic before the collected Berlin was published in 2018 to widespread acclaim, including rave reviews in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Nation, Vulture, Washington Post, and many other outlets. Lutes s historical fiction about the decline of the Weimar Republic and the rise of fascism is seen through the eyes of the Jews and the Nazis; the socialists and the socialites; the lavishly decorated queer clubs and the crumbling tenement apartments. Marthe Muller is an aspiring artist escaping the memory of a brother killed in World War One by throwing herself into a life-altering romance. Kurt Severing is an idealistic journalist losing faith in the printed word as fascism and extremism take hold. The Brauns are a family torn apart by poverty, politics, and the May Day protests of 1929. The Cocoa Kids are an American jazz band slowly realizing there s no place left for them in a changing Berlin. Lutes weaves these characters lives into the larger fabric of a city slowly ripping apart, crafting a polyphonic novel that is rich in its historical detail and as timely as ever in its depiction of a society slowly awakening to the stranglehold of fascism.

Publisher Review

"With its rich sense of time and place, nuanced portrayal of individual destinies, precisely rendered imagery, and poetic expression of themes, Jason Lutes's Berlin is truly a masterful narrative."--Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow "A watershed achievement--Berlin charted new territory for the graphic novel and comics at the same time, at once a story about artists trying to make art during the rise of the Nazis in Germany, and a bildungsroman of the first order. This landmark collection returns this story to us now when we need examples of how to stay human to each other in the face of a politics that turns friends into enemies--a newly necessary book."--Alexander Chee, The Queen of the Night "Lutes covers the cabaret scene, the struggles of the press and riots as the Nazis rise, and lives that seemed full of possibility are twisted by the grasping arms of the state... A modern classic."--The Guardian Best Books of 2018 "Berlin reads like not just a masterwork but also a life's work."--The Washington Post, 10 Best Graphic Novels of 2018 ""Recommend" isn't a strong enough verb for conveying how badly you need to read Berlin... The stories that play out between those two bookends sway from the romantic to the apocalyptic and back again, and the intricate linework and oft-mind-blowing layouts are incomparable. For a reader who's white-knuckling it through our present period of social collapse, Berlin is a beacon of both warning and hope."--Vulture "One of the most ambitious, important and fully-realized works of graphic literature yet created, a real masterpiece of both story and art."--Forbes