Shadows of Berlin: The Berlin Stories of Dovid Bergelson

Tales of Jewish life in Berlin

In this collection of short stories, Dovid Bergelson captures life in Berlin at the precarious moment between world wars — in particular the experiences of its Jewish community and the uneasy existence of intellectual exiles in an often hostile city. Bergelson, who left his native Ukraine after experiencing one of the many thousands of pogroms first-hand, settled in Berlin at a time of excitement for its Jewish artists and intellectuals, as Yiddish literature and art flourished, all-too-briefly, in the German metropolis.

The Shadows of Berlin is, in part, a bleak chronicle of life in a Europe growing ever more hostile at the edge of World War II. More than that, these stories offer glimpses into a community and a world now lost. They are also parables of modern life, drawing as much on the transformative possibility of scripture as they do on the gritty depictions of the Berlin street. Bergelson?s stories — passionate, honest, dark, and often hilarious — hint at the possibility of redemption even as they suggest a horror just around the corner.

Dovid Bergelson (1884-1952) is considered to be one of the best Soviet Yiddish writers of the twentieth century. He was executed in 1952, as part of Stalin?s final purge of Soviet Yiddish culture.

Joachim Neugroschel is the winner of three PEN Translation Awards and the French-American Translation Prize. He is also the editor and translator of the superb anthology, No Star Too Beautiful: A Treasury of Yiddish Stories.