Berlin Now

Peter Schneider makes the city come alive. He knows his stuff and shares it beautifully, elegantly, generously and informatively. Berlin has found its bard

Breyten Breytenbach, author of 'Notes from the Middle World'

Enlightening. Berlin resident Schneider unearths the city's charms and hazards . . . [to] reveal an authentic city that does not bother being more lively than beautiful

Publishers Weekly

Wonderful

Ian McEwan (on 'The Wall Jumper')

Marvelous . . . creates, in very few words, the unreal reality of Berlin

Salman Rushdie (on 'The Wall Jumper')

Schneider's description of the Berlin Wall from both sides . . . is the ultimate depiction of this structure. Nothing more need be said

Werner Herzog (on 'The Wall Jumper')

Peter Schneider, a novelist and essayist who knows and loves Berlin like few other living German writers, gives an intimate picture of the city's transformation

Financial Times

The inside story of the city then and now

Stylist

Berlin Now is stuffed with glorious anecdotes about the rows over architecture, infrastructure, sexuality and morality in a city forced to weld itself together since 1989

New Statesman

As rich, vibrant and snappy as its subject

Wanderlust Magazine

In 30-odd short pieces on the city's architecture, its immigrant communities, its famous night life and its sexual mores, Mr. Schneider tries to answer this question: If Berlin is not beautiful, why is it so beloved? To his credit, he avoids the easy answers

Wall Street Journal

A gathering of illuminations, a button box of participant observations . . . Schneider is an old-school flaneur, a psychogeographer who can screw down very close upon a subject. He finds a wide scattering of exceptional nooks and crannies whose critical mass may well be the city's soul

Barnes and Noble

Illuminating. Page after page yields surprising nuggets of wisdom . . . Schneider entrances with his off-the-beaten-track forays. His final picture is a detailed and absorbing portrait of an unfinished city that has all the dynamism of a complete one

New Criterion

[An] engrossing book, which attempts what's practically impossible - describing the essence of what makes Berlin so Berlin

Christian Science Monitor

The author of The Wall Jumper presents his collected musings about the city that has inspired and perplexed him since he was first seduced by West Berlin as a young man in the early 1960s. Berlin is not traditionally beautiful, he notes; it is a hodgepodge of cultural fits and starts . . . It is a city scarred by its history but also proud of its weirdness, its resilience, and its condition of constant change. In the end, Schneider seems to suggest, liveliness is far more important than beauty

Booklist [STARRED REVIEW]

An intriguing journey through Berlin by a longtime interested observer

Kirkus