Ralph Martin is a writer and journalist living in Prenzlauer Berg. He has written for the New York Times, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, GQ, and other publications; his book Ich Bleib Dann Mal Hier, a gonzo memoir of a New Yorker who becomes German, will appear in Autumn  2009 from Dumont Verlag.

Born in Southern California’s Mojave desert in the late 60s, writer/editor Kimberly Bradley’s base has moved steadily eastward. After graduating from Middlebury College in 1990, she ventured to Hamburg, Germany, where she inadvertently found herself in a divided country attempting to put itself back together. Now based in Berlin, Bradley writes about art, design, architecture and travel for such publications as The New York Times, Metropolis, Artnet.com and Frame. She is also a frequent contributor to monographs and art catalogs as a translator or writer.

Photo by Paul

Andrea Scrima is an artist and writer from New York who has been living in Berlin for much of her adult life. A graduate of the School of Visual Arts and the Hochschule der Künste, she has been the recipient of numerous grants and awards for her art and writing from institutions including the Pollock-Krasner Foundation in New York and the Senatsverwaltung für Wissenschaft, Forschung und Kultur in Berlin. Her short story “Sisters” was awarded a National Hackney Literary Award in 2007. For more about her work, please go to her website.

The image above is taken from Scrima’s installation Shelf Life.

Siri Hustvedt is the author of four novels, The Blindfold, The Enchantment of Lily Dahl, What I Loved, and The Sorrows of an American, as well as two books of essays, A Plea for Eros, and Mysteries of the Rectangle: Essays on Painting.

Eve Lucas grew up in England and has a degree in French and German from King’s College London and a Masters in Art History from the University of Maryland. She has lived in Berlin since returning to Germany from Washington DC in 2003 and works as a book critic and journalist for English-language magazines based in Munich and Berlin. She has published a couple of short stories and is currently working on her first collection. Her bike, purchased on a flea-market in Georgetown, is a treasured friend.

Sarah LeVine is a British-born anthropologist and writer who lives in Massachusetts. Her most recent book is The Saint of Kathmandu and Other Tales of the Sacred in Distant Lands (Beacon Press, 2008).

R. Jay Magill Jr. is a writer and illustrator whose work has appeared in the New York Times, International Herald Tribune, Wall Street Journal, Atlantic Monthly, American Prospect, American Interest, Foreign Policy, The Believer, and Spiegel On-line, among others. He is the author of Chic Ironic Bitterness (Michigan, 2007), recipient of an Eric Hoffer Notable Book in Culture award. Magill holds a PhD in American Studies from the University of Hamburg and lives in Berlin, where he works for the American Academy.

Illustration above also by R. Jay Magill

This is the first in a series of readings, by the actor Harvey Friedman, of passages taken from novels that explore eras of Berlin past.

First published in Germany in 1947 and finally translated into English in 2009, Every Man Dies Alone is a true masterpiece from a bestselling writer who saw his life crumble following his decision not to flee Germany and his refusal to join the Nazi party. The novel presents a richly detailed portrait of life in Berlin under the Nazis and tells the sweeping saga of one working-class couple’s decision to take a stand when their only son is killed at the front. With nothing but their grief and each other against the awesome power of the Reich, Otto and Anna Quangel launch a simple, clandestine resistance campaign that soon has an enraged Gestapo on their trail and a world of terrified neighbors and cynical snitches ready to turn them in. A deeply stirring story of two people standing up for what’s right and for each other.

For more information about this novel and its author please go to the website of Melville House Publishing.

Joyce Hackett’s fiction and non-fiction have appeared in publications including Harpers, The Paris Review, London Magazine, Boston Review, Prospect (UK), The Independent, Salon, and the Berlin Daily Der Tagespiegel. Her first novel, Disturbance of the Inner Ear, won the 2003 the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for Fiction by an American Woman. Hackett is currently writing a novel about Frederick Douglass and his German-Jewish mistress, Ottilie Assing. For more, please go to her website.

Photography courtesy of I.L.U. Photoblog

Liesl Schillinger is a New York-based arts writer and literary critic, and a regular contributor to the New York Times Book Review. She translates from French, German, and Italian when time allows, and currently is at work on a travel memoir.

Schillinger is especially well-versed, as both critic and translator, in the world of German literature. Please read her recent review of Hans Fallada’s novel Every Man Dies Alone and her translations of Vladimer Kaminer’s story Animal Transport and Bernd Lichtenberg’s story Whakatane Calling. For a complete list of her reviews for the New York Times Book Review please click here.

Image from The Sound of Music courtesy of 20th Century Fox.