with the book "Babylon Berlin" by Volker Kutscher
This month’s pick at the European Union Book Club in Ottawa comes from Germany. Volker Kutscher’s novel
Babylon Berlin is the first book in the international-bestselling series from Volker Kutscher that centers on Detective Gereon Rath caught up in a web of drugs, sex, political intrigue, and murder in Berlin as Germany teeters on the edge of Nazism.
ABOUT THE BOOK
It’s 1929 and Berlin is the vibrating metropolis of post-war Germany—full of bars and brothels and dissatisfied workers at the point of revolt. Gereon Rath is new in town and new to the police department.
When a dead man without an identity, bearing traces of atrocious torture, is discovered, Rath sees a chance to find his way back into the homicide division. He discovers a connection with a circle of oppositional exiled Russians who try to purchase arms with smuggled gold in order to prepare a coup d’état. But there are other people trying to get hold of the gold and the guns, too. Raths finds himself up against paramilitaries and organized criminals. He falls in love with Charlotte, a typist in the homicide squad, and misuses her insider’s knowledge for his personal investigations. And as he gets further entangled with the case, he never imagined becoming a suspect himself.
THE BASIS FOR THE INTERNATIONAL TV SENSATION BABYLON BERLIN
"Cabaret on cocaine...captures the dark glamour of a briefly exhilarating time between the wars." --NPR
"Volker Kutscher, who wrote the novels on which the series is based, has a similar disregard for the sanctity of his characters' lives as Thrones' George R. R. Martin." --The Spectator (UK)
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