The Weather in Berlin
A Novel
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- $1.99
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- $1.99
Publisher Description
A New York Times Notable Book: “An elegantly written, strikingly intelligent novel” about wrestling with the past and the future in a reunified Germany (Newsday).
Shot in Germany in the late 1960s, Dix Greenwood’s first film, Summer, 1921, is revered as an antiwar classic. Thirty years later and after more than a decade of silence, Dix returns to Berlin on a residency that he hopes will rekindle his genius. He encounters a newly reunited Germany, full of promise yet mired in the past—much like Dix himself. To this day, he is haunted by the mystery of Jana Sorb, the actress who disappeared during the making of Summer, 1921 and has long since been presumed dead.
When Jana suddenly reappears in Dix’s life, it sets off a cascade of recollections and realizations that will forever change the way he approaches his art . . . and his life. In this tale of Americans abroad, National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize finalist Ward Just turns his keen eye toward the dark underpinnings of nationalism, fame, and artistic integrity, in “an elegantly written, strikingly intelligent novel, as knowing about movies, the German enigma, and the vagaries of fame as it is about matters of the heart” (Newsday).
“Ward Just writes the kind of books they say no one writes anymore: smart, well-crafted narratives—wise to the ways of the world—that use fiction to show us how we live.” —Los Angeles Times
“Every so often, a well-established, respected novelist vaults to a new level, demonstrating a mastery of craft that startles even his fans. That’s what Ward Just has done in . . . ‘The Weather in Berlin.’” —Newsweek
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A tinted review in adult Forecasts indicates a book that's of exceptional importance to our readers, but hasn't received a starred or boxed review.THE WEATHER IN BERLINWard Just. Houghton Mifflin, $24 (320p) Just's provocative novels (Echo House, etc.) combine sharp journalistic observation with an unsentimental view of human behavior, expressed in economical prose taut with ironic implications. His specialty is the depiction of men adrift in difficult times, generally in cultures that conspire to drain them of dignity and decency. Here, the central character is a 64-year-old filmmaker, Dixon Greenwood, whose first movie, filmed in Germany in the late 1960s, was acclaimed as an antiwar classic. But Greenwood has endured a 15-year dry spell, and is convinced that he has lost his audience and his creative gifts. In 1999, he returns to dreary wintertime Berlin on a fellowship. Many of the Germans he meets are bitterly mired in the past, disillusioned with the politics of the left and the right and resentful of America's prosperity. Dix feels alienated, weary, displaced until two events occur. He agrees to direct the climactic episode of Germany's most popular TV drama, Wannsee 1899, a nostalgic evocation of the glory days of old Prussia. Then a significant figure from his past reappears. While Just's insights into the modern world are trenchant, his characters too often declaim their opinions in sometimes tendentious and didactic speeches. Yet characters who spout jingoism, racism and self-pity are countered by more moderate voices that may promise a changed national psyche. And the intelligence that suffuses the narrative creates a compelling dynamic in which the historical forces of the 20th century are embodied in human terms. Author tour.
