Berlin Alexanderplatz

One of the landmarks of modern German literature finally has a solid English translation, said Amanda DeMarco in The Wall Street Journal. The slang-laden dialogue in Alfred Döblin’s 1929 novel about an ex-con struggling to go straight is “fiendishly difficult” to translate, and Michael Hoffman was brave to attempt a new English edition. But he’s done well by being as loose as Döblin was. With Berlin Alexanderplatz, “the translator’s challenge is to master its crude, prodigious energies.”