Books like 'The Wall Jumper: A Berlin Story'
Readers who enjoyed The Wall Jumper: A Berlin Story by Peter Schneider also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
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The Fortress by Meša Selimović
Rated: 4.67 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsA novel on 18th century Sarajevo under Ottoman rule, featuring a soldier returned from the wars. A Muslim, he marries a Christian girl who supports him while he dabbles in politics, eventually leading a raid to rescue a friend from jail... -
Checkmate by Dorothy Dunnett
Rated: 4.70 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsFor the first time Dunnett's Lymond Chronicles are available in the United States in quality paperback editions.Sixth in the legendary Lymond Chronicles, Checkmate takes place in 1557, where Francis Crawford of Lymond is once again in France, leading an army against England... -
The Devil to Pay in the Backlands by João Guimarães Rosa
Rated: 4.56 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsLively reminiscences of bandit warfare in the sertao, the still primitive Brazilian back country, told by a wise, retired outlaw chief. ~Worldcat.orgGrande Sertão: Veredas (Portuguese for "Great Backlands: Tracks"; English translation: The Devil to Pay in the Backlands) is a novel published in 1956 by the Brazilian writer João Guimarães Rosa...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult book fiction historical -
A Feather on the Water by Lindsay Jayne Ashford
Rated: 4.38 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsFor three women in postwar Germany, 1945 is a time of hope—lost and found—in this powerful novel by the bestselling author of The Woman on the Orient Express.Just weeks after World War II ends, three women from different corners of the world arrive in Germany to run a displaced-persons camp... -
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The Girl from Berlin by Kate Hewitt
Rated: 4.44 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThey sat together on the roof, watching Berlin burn, as traces of smoke and cloud floated through the air. “I just want to be free,” Rosa said quietly, “Even if only for a few minutes. It might be the last chance I have.”Berlin, 1936: From her beautiful new home a young woman named Liesel Scholz barely notices the changes to the city around her...Categorized as:
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Two Brothers by Ben Elton
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsTwo Brothers is a heartrending story of two boys growing up under the darkening shadow of the Nazis. Born in Berlin in 1920 and raised by the same parents, one boy is Jewish, his adopted brother is Aryan. At first, their origins are irrelevant. But as the political landscape changes they are forced to make decisions with horrifying consequences... -
A Man by Oriana Fallaci
Rated: 4.39 of 5 stars · 18 ratings"What's the point anyway — Of suffering, dying? It teaches us to live, boy. A man who does not struggle does not live, he survives." (quote from the book)The book is a pseudo-biography about Alexandros Panagoulis written in the form of a novel. Fallaci had an intense romantic relationship with Panagoulis...Categorized as:
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Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night by Dylan Thomas
Rated: 4.43 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsDo Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night is a villanelle considered to be among the finest works by Welsh poet Dylan Thomas...Categorized as:
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An American in Paris by Siobhan Curham
Rated: 4.43 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsWalking through Montmartre that morning was like the eerie calm right before a storm. The roads were deserted. We carried on, arm in arm, and then finally, we saw them. Columns and columns of soldiers, spreading through the streets like a toxic grey vapour. ‘You must write about this,’ he whispered to me. ‘You must write about the day freedom left Paris...Categorized as:
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From the Dark We Rise by Marion Kummerow
Rated: 4.36 of 5 stars · 14 ratings“Please, let me help. I won’t tell anyone.” It was madness to help an escaped prisoner in Nazi Germany, but how could she not? If it weren’t for a lucky strike of fate, she might be the woman on the ground shivering with fear...Categorized as:
europe western-central-europe germany historical-fiction literary-fiction ww2 fiction historical -
Kinfolk by Pearl S. Buck
Rated: 4.36 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsKinfolk is the story of a Chinese family. Dr. Liang moves to America in search of a better life, but his children long to return to China. Each responds to their new life in China differently, providing rich insight into the struggles between Eastern and Western culture, and the differences between generations...Categorized as:
historical-fiction classics politics literary-fiction fiction historical family 20th-century -
Night Angels by Weina Dai Randel
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsFrom the author of The Last Rose of Shanghai comes a profoundly moving novel based on the true story of a diplomat and his wife who risked their lives to help Viennese Jews escape the Nazis.1938. Dr. Ho Fengshan, consul general of China, is posted in Vienna with his American wife, Grace...Categorized as:
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The Family Carnovsky by Israel J. Singer
Rated: 4.31 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThe dread shadow of Nazism falls upon the Carnovsky family, three generations of Jews who believe themselves totally assimilated into German society. David, who has prospered in "enlightened, civilized" Berlin and considers himself "more German than the Germans", cannot rationalize the momentous events engulfing him...Categorized as:
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A Mind at Peace by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar
Rated: 4.28 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsLibrarian note: Alternate cover edition of: 9780976395096Set on the eve of World War II, A Mind at Peace captures the anxieties of a Turkish family facing the difficult reality entrenched in the early republic, founded on the ashes of the Ottoman Empire in 1923...Categorized as:
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The Maid's Secret by Shari J. Ryan
Rated: 4.40 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsCzechoslovakia, 1942: “Please don’t take him,” I plead to the Nazis.“I love you, Mila,” Ben says, hoarsely. “So much. Forever.”“Ben!” I shout as the soldiers pull him away, my heart thudding. “I love you. Please, come back.” I’m screaming at the top of my lungs as the world turns black around me.In the mountains of Bohemia, Mila, a Romani, works as a maid for an aristocratic Jewish family...Categorized as:
europe western-central-europe historical-fiction literary-fiction war historical ww2 fiction -
Palestine's Children: Returning to Haifa & Other Stories by Ghassan Kanafani
Rated: 4.40 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsPolitics and the novel, Ghassan Kanafani once said, are an indivisible case. Fadl al-Naqib has reflected that Kanafani wrote the Palestinian story, then he was written by it. His narratives offer entry into the Palestinian experience of the conflict that has anguished the people of the Middle East for more than a century...Categorized as:
historical-fiction politics classics university fiction historical 20th-century colonization -
A Division of the Spoils by Paul Scott, Richard Brown
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsAgainst the backdrop of the violent partition of India and Pakistan, this volume sketches one last bittersweet romance, revealing the divided loyalties of the British as they flee, retreat from, or cling to India...Categorized as:
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Collected Short Stories: Volume 2 by W. Somerset Maugham
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsThis final classic collection reveals Somerset Maugham's unique talent for exposing and exploring the bitter realities of human relationships in tales of love, infidelity, passion and prejudice. The stories range from "The Lotus Eater" where a man envisions a life of bliss in the Mediterranean, to the astringent tales of "The Outstation" and "The Back of Beyond" in Malaya and South East Asia...Categorized as:
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The Smallest Crack by Roberta Kagan
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 12 ratings1933 Berlin, GermanyWhen the price for life is dishonor dipped in blood, how much is too much?Eli Kaetzel and his beautiful but timid wife Rebecca suddenly find themselves in the gaping maws of Adolf Hitler's murderous rampage. Eli knows that their only chance, however slim, for survival may lie in the hands of Gretchen, a spirited Aryan girl...Categorized as:
europe western-central-europe germany urban historical-fiction literary-fiction ww2 fiction -
Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky by Patrick Hamilton
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsA timeless classic of sleazy London life in the 1930s, a world of streets full of cruelty and kindness, comedy and pathos, where people emerge from cheap lodgings in Pimlico to pour out their passions, hopes and despair in pubs and bars... -
Ofrene by Gerald Green
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsGerald Green's novel Holocaust, which is based on his teleplay for the 1978 NBC miniseries, seeks to put faces on the tragedy by telling the story of the experience of two German families whose lives intersect at certain points... -
A Foreign Woman by Sergei Dovlatov, Antonina W. Bouis
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsAfter leaving the Soviet Union following a series of unsatisfying relationships, Marusya Tatarovich quickly becomes the center of the Russian community in Queens, New York, but finds that it mirrors in many ways the community she left...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction politics urban 20th-century adult audiobook -
A Fight in Silence by Melanie Metzenthin
Rated: 4.30 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsGermany, 1926. When Richard and Paula meet in bustling, cosmopolitan Hamburg, everything feels possible. They fall in love, marry and are soon blessed with twins, a beautiful boy and girl. When Richard qualifies as a psychiatrist, life ahead looks bright. Their only sadness is that their son, Georg, was born deaf, although with his family to protect him they’re sure he’ll be okay...Categorized as:
europe western-central-europe germany historical-fiction literary-fiction fiction historical war -
The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume 2: The Romantic Period through the Twentieth Century by M.H. Abrams, Stephen Greenblatt
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsFirmly grounded by the hallmark strengths of all Norton Anthologies--thorough and helpful introductory matter, judicious annotation, complete texts wherever possible--The Norton Anthology of English Literature has been revitalized in this Eighth Edition through the collaboration between six new editors and six seasoned ones...Categorized as:
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Missing Soluch by Mahmoud Dowlatabadi
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsPerhaps the most important work in modern Iranian literature, this starkly beautiful novel examines the trials of an impoverished woman and her children living in a remote village in Iran, after the unexplained disappearance of her husband, Soluch.Lyrical yet unsparing, the novel examines her life as she contends with the political corruption, authoritarianism, and poverty of the village...Categorized as:
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The Major Plays by Anton Chekhov, Rosamund Bartlett
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsAnton ChekhovThe Major PlaysIvanov * The Sea Gull * Uncle Vanya * The Three Sisters * The Cherry Orchard“Let the things that happen onstage be just as complex and yet just as simple as they are in life,” Chekhov once declared. “For instance, people are having a meal, just having a meal, but at the same time, their happiness is being created, or their lives are being smashed up...Categorized as:
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The Last Train to London by Meg Waite Clayton
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsThe New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Exiles conjures her best novel yet, a pre-World War II-era story with the emotional resonance of Orphan Train and All the Light We Cannot See, centering on the Kindertransports that carried thousands of children out of Nazi-occupied Europe—and one brave woman who helped them escape to safety...Categorized as:
europe historical-fiction literary-fiction politics urban western-central-europe 20th-century adult -
Die roten Matrosen by Klaus Kordon
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsBerlin 1918/1919. Nach vier Jahren Weltkrieg verweigern die Matrosen der kaiserlichen Marine in Kiel den Befehl zum Auslaufen und kommen nach Berlin. In der Stadt beginnt es zu brodeln. Helmut, genannt Helle, und Fritz freunden sich mit den meuternden Matrosen der Hochseeflotte an, erleben die Revolution mit, den Sieg - und auch die Niederlage...Categorized as:
europe germany historical-fiction urban western-central-europe 20th-century book children -
The Boy in the Attic by Imogen Matthews
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsAnna opened the letter with trembling hands. ‘My darling, if you’re reading this, I haven’t managed to unravel my parents’ secret. But you can. Will you finish the search for me, find out who they were, and who you really are?’Nazi-occupied Holland, 1944. As soldiers patrol the streets, nursing student Ilse is only just surviving the terrible famine and increasingly violent German occupation...Categorized as:
europe historical-fiction literary-fiction western-central-europe 20th-century adult book fiction -
Selected Poems by Boris Pasternak, Борис Пастернак
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsAleksandr Blok (1880-1921) lived through his country's savage wars and radical traumas trying to welcome the new order. Trotsky wrote, `Certainly Blok is not one of us, but he came towards us. And that is what broke him.' Pasternak said, `He is as free as the wind... -
Standartenführer's Wife by Ellie Midwood
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsThis is a diary of Annalise Meissner, a young German Jew with long time ago falsified papers, living a carefree life in pre-war Berlin. A talented ballerina, she comes from a wealthy family and at first doesn’t want to concern herself with the changes her country starts undergoing under the new Nazi regime...Categorized as:
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The Collected Stories of Katherine Mansfield by Katherine Mansfield
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsWith an Introduction and Notes by Professor Stephen Arkin, San Francisco State University.Katherine Mansfield is widely regarded as a writer who helped create the modern short story. Born in Wellington, New Zealand in 1888, she came to London in 1903 to attend Queen's College and returned permanently in 1908... -
Michal's Destiny by Roberta Kagan
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsIt is 1919 in Siberia. Michal—a young, sheltered girl—has eyes for a man other than her betrothed. For a young girl growing up in a traditional Jewish settlement, an arranged marriage is a fact of life. However, destiny, it seems, has other plans for Michal. When a Cossack pogrom invades her small village, the protected life Michal has grown accustomed to and loves will crumble before her eyes... -
Sunday In The Park With George: A Musical by Stephen Sondheim, James Lapine
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsInspired by Georges Seurat's pointillist masterpiece Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte Sondheim and Lapine's musical celebrates the art of creation and the creation of art...Categorized as:
classics europe historical-fiction university urban western-central-europe 20th-century adult -
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News from the Empire by Fernando del Paso
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsOne of the acknowledged masterpieces of Mexican literature, Fernando del Paso's News from the Empire is a powerful and encyclopedic novel of the tragic lives of Maximilian and his wife, Carlota, the short-lived Emperor and Empress of Mexico...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction politics fiction historical 20th-century book adult -
Buddies by Ethan Mordden
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratings"What unites us, all of us, surely is brotherhood, a sense that our friendships are historic, designed to hold Stonewall together," muses on character in Ethan Mordden's Buddies. This need for friendship, for nonerotic affection, for buddies, shines forth as an American obsession from Moby-Dick through Of Mice and Men to The Sting... -
The Last Hurrah by Edwin O'Connor
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsO'Connor's 1956 account of big-city politics, inspired by the career of longtime Boston Mayor James M. Curley, portrays its Irish-American political boss as a demagogue and a rogue who nonetheless deeply understands his constituents. The book was later made into a John Ford film staring Spencer Tracy... -
The Engineer of Human Souls by Josef Škvorecký
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsThe Engineer of Human Souls is a labyrinthine comic novel that investigates the journey and plight of novelist Danny Smiricky, a Czech immigrant to Canada. As the novel begins, he is a professor of American literature at a college in Toronto...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction politics 20th-century adult book communism -
My Friends by Emmanuel Bove, Garnette Cadogan
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsEmanuel Bove's first novel, My Friends, relates the story of Victor Baton, a wounded war veteran trying to reestablish his prewar lifestyle but avoid work. Living in a run-down boardinghouse, Baton spends his days searching working-class Paris for the modest comforts of warmth, cheap meals, and friendship, but he finds little...Categorized as:
europe western-central-europe urban classics literary-fiction france fiction 20th-century -
Mendelssohn is on the Roof by Jiří Weil
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsOn the roof of Prague's concert hall, Julius Schlesinger, aspiring SS officer, is charged with the removal of the statue of the Jew Mendelssohn--but which one is he? Remembering his course on "racial science," Schlesinger instructs his men to pull down the statue with the biggest nose. Only as the statue topples does he recognize the face of Richard Wagner...Categorized as:
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Roman Fever (and Other Stories) by Edith Wharton
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsA Virago Modern Classic These stories - all powerful moral analyses - demonstrate the true professionalism of Edith Wharton... -
Where the Air Is Clear by Carlos Fuentes
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratings"Where the Air Is Clear," Carlos Fuentes's first novel, is an unsparing portrayal of Mexico City's upper class. Departing from a traditional linear narrative, Fuentes overlays Mexican myths onto contemporary settings, showing that even the rich and powerful must succumb to the indomitable spirit of Mexico, which undermines all institutions and shapes all destinies...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction politics 20th-century adult book fiction -
The Zone: A Prison Camp Guard's Story by Sergei Dovlatov
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe Zone is a satirical novelization of Dovlatov’s time as a prison guard for the Soviet Army in the early 1960s. Snapshots of the prison are juxtaposed with the narrator’s letters to Igor Markovich of Hermitage Press in which he urges Igor to publish the very book we’re reading. As Igor receives portions of the prison camp manuscript, so too does the reader...Categorized as:
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The German Lesson by Siegfried Lenz
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsSiggi Jepsen, incarcerated as a juvenile delinquent, is one day assigned to write a routine German lesson on the "The Joys of Duty... -
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Spy Line by Len Deighton
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsBritish agent Bernard Samson finds himself inexplicably hunted as a traitor, forced to abandon his life, his job, his position, and plunge into hiding in the most dangerous and darkest corner of Berlin. What is happening? What has he done? Nothing makes sense until Samson discovers that the Secret Service has known all along where he is. In fact, they have never taken him off the payroll... -
Mephisto by Klaus Mann
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsKlaus Mann - Thomas Mann’s son - wrote MEPHISTO while living in exile from the Germany of World War II. In it he captures the Isherwood-like atmosphere of Nazi Germany while telling a satiric story about the rise to power of one man - a thinly veiled caricature of his own brother-in-law...Categorized as:
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The Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsFirst published in 1935 and 1939, the two related novels, The Last of Mr. Norris and Goodbye to Berlin, which make up The Berlin Stories are recognized today as classics of modern fiction...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction politics university urban 20th-century adult -
Babylon Revisited and Other Stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald, James L.W. West III
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsWritten between 1920 and 1937, when F. Scott Fitzgerald was at the height of his creative powers, these ten lyric tales represent some of the author's finest fiction...Categorized as:
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Zayni Barakat by Gamal al-Ghitani, جمال الغيطاني
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratings"In the course of my long travels I have never seen a city so devastated. After a long time I ventured out into the streets. Death, cold and heavy, hung in the air. Walls have no value here, doors have been eliminated. No one is certain that they will see another day...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction politics 20th-century adult book fiction historical -
The Man Who Lived Underground by Richard Wright
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsA major literary event: an explosive, previously unpublished novel from the 1940s by the legendary author of Native Son and Black Boy. Fred Daniels, a black man, is picked up randomly by the police after a brutal murder in a Chicago neighborhood and taken to the local precinct where he is tortured until he confesses to a crime he didn't commit...Categorized as:
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