The subtitle of Larson's 2011 bestseller is "Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin." Optional: works by two authors of prewar Berlin noir fiction, Philip Kerr and Volker Kutscher.
Plenty of copies of In the Garden of Beasts are on hand at Evanston Public Library. If we run out, please call us at 847-448-8630 or go to your EPL online account to request one from a partner library. March Violets (1989), Philip Kerr's effort to transplant the American noir genre to 1930s Berlin, will also be discussed. Kerr's hard-boiled detective Bernie Gunther has a lot in common with his American counterparts Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade. But does he get Berlin, Berliners, and Nazis right--at least as described by Erik Larson? (And by the way, are you convinced that Larson got it right himself??) For comparison, there is also a host of translated German crime fiction set in pre-war Berlin. Perhaps best known is the Gideon Rath series by Volker Kutscher, set in late 20s and early 30s Berlin, just before the Nazi takeover. Kutscher's series, appearing in German starting 2008, has been praised for its historical accuracy. It has also been made into a high-budget, internationally successful Netflix series, Babylon Berlin--which is also the title of the first novel (2008) featuring Gideon Rath. But, guess what, Kutscher says he was heavily influenced in writing these crime novels by The Sopranos and by Sam Mendes' hardboiled gangster movie Road to Perdition (2002) as well as Fritz Lang's 1931 film M, also set in Berlin and starring a very young Peter Lorre. Read (watch) whatever interests you and let's throw everything into the discussion hopper--and see what comes of it!
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