A prophetic, darkly comic lost classic about down-and-outs in a fractured Berlin by the author of the Sunday Times bestselling rediscovery The Passenger

'A writer of great insight and talent' FT

Berlin, 1920s: a beacon of culture and hedonism, but a political mess. The streets are crowded with war veterans, beggars, prostitutes and madmen, desperately chasing any means to secure a few marks or a roof over their heads. Come nighttime, a rag-tag group descends on the Jolly Huntsman pub to dance and drown their cares in all the schnapps they can afford. But in this society on the brink, pleasure all too easily erupts into violence.

A bleakly comic story of struggle and discontent on the fringes of the metropolis, Berlin Shuffle is a blistering portrait of a divided society that would give way to fascism. Written when he was just twenty-two years old, Boschwitz's first novel displays his extraordinary talent for capturing Germany's self-destruction, which would tragically engulf him only five years later.

"Chilling and vividly portrayed . . . This clear-eyed novel from Boschwitz (The Passenger), who died in 1942, excavates the resentments of a broad cast of German characters as the country slides toward fascism. . . The plot threads are seamlessly stitched together. . . Profound" - Publishers Weekly

"A welcome addition to Boschwitz's oeuvre. . . The book's greatest strength is showing, in day-to-day terms . . . an atmosphere in which a fascist government could arise. . . Many of the novel's concerns overlap with those of the present day" - Kirkus Reviews

"Praise for" - The Passenger

"Part John Buchan, part Franz Kafka and wholly riveting. It is also uncannily prescient [...] a gripping novel that plunges the reader into the gloom of Nazi Germany as the darkness was descending" - Guardian

"There have been a number of great novels about the Second World War that have come to light again in recent times, most notably Suite Française and Alone in Berlin. I'm not sure that The Passenger might not be the greatest of them" - Sunday Times

"Gripping and viscerally affecting" - Telegraph

"By turns claustrophobic, dizzying and symbolic, The Passenger is a work with sufficient pace to be a thriller, yet possessed of enough nuance and psychological depth to be of real literary weight" - Spectator

"A writer of great insight and talent" - Financial Times

"A riveting, noirish, intensely filmic portrait... a jewel of a rediscovery: At once a deeply satisfying novel and a vital historical document" - Wall Street Journal