The Shadows Of Berlin: The Berlin Stories Of Dovid Bergelson

In this collection of short stories, Dovid Bergelson captures life in Berlin at the precarious moment between world wars - in particular the experiences of Berlin's 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, in part, parables of modern life, drawing as much on the transformative possibility of scripture as they do on gritty depictions of the Berlin street. Bergelson's stories hint at the possibility of redemption even as they suggest a horror just around the corner.