Berlin Cantata - Softcover

"We read of secrets kept, deals executed, mysteries uncovered, impossible love, and, always, loss. With outstanding craft Jeffrey Lewis examines the political sentiments, and every possible, probable, and wrenching emotion we might imagine. The novel begs to be read more than once, to savor every nuance of expression, inner conflict, and resolution." (Penny Metsch 2012-04-27)

"By giving voice to his characters, Lewis navigates their tales with compassion and fully explores the complications of living in a city haunted by its violent past." (2012-04-30)

'Among Berlin Cantata’s most interesting aspects is its inclusion of an oft-neglected population: Jews who continued to live in Europe—and Germany—after the Holocaust... Lewis also impresses with his ability to create distinct voices for each of first-person “soloists”...' (Erika Dreifus 2012-08-27)

‘A city that has lost one of its limbs and is receiving a miraculous gift, a little bump under the flesh, where the limb is just beginning to grow back.’ Thus does the American girl in Jeffrey Lewis’s remarkable polyphonic novel describe Berlin and the ‘remnant Jews, secret GDR Jews...Soviet Jews...Jews who’d fled and come back with the victors, Jews who were lost mandarins now, Jews who’d believed in the universality of man and maybe still did’ whom she finds at a Day of Atonement gathering in the eastern part of the city in a year soon after the Wall fell. Berlin Cantata deploys thirteen voices to tell a story not only of atonement, but of discovery, loss, identity, intrigue, mystery, insanity, sadomasochism and lies. At its centre is a country house owned successively by Jews, Nazis and Communists. In the country house, the American girl seeks her hidden past. In the girl, a local reporter seeks redemption. In the reporter, a false hero of the past seeks exposure. In the false hero, the American girl seeks a guide. And so it goes, a round of conspiracy and desire. Even as he describes his native city, the false hero describes the characters of Berlin Cantata: ‘We dined on wreckage. We were not afraid to beg. We continued our long tradition of believing either in nothing or too much.’