"Berlin Atomized is the world bridged, coupled, and made fast—by the latest lost generation and by Julia Kornberg's border-and-genre-crossing talent, as restless as a flame." —Joshua Cohen, author of the Pulitzer Prize and National Jewish Book Award winning The Netanyahus
A kinetic, globetrotting novel following three siblings—Jewish and downwardly mobile—from 2001 to 2034, as they come of age against the major crises of the 21st century.
Berlin Atomized begins in Buenos Aires of the early 2000s with the self-baptisms of Nina Goldstein. She bathes too frequently, washing with fervor and repeating: “I am not asleep.” She grows up partying and taking undeserved siestas, while her eldest brother Jeremías is drawn into the city’s powder keg music scene, and the middle sibling, Mateo, learns of his terminal illness and prepares to join the IDF. Though Argentina faces the worst economic crisis in its history, the Goldsteins are being reared in a newly developed gated community that displaces working class families. Each sibling rehearses their escape from the capitalist Eden of their birth, unaware that the gated community will soon be underwater, and their family scattered all over the earth.
The second half of the novel takes place between 2018 and 2035, invoking and imagining possible futures for this existence in migration. Jeremías lives in Paris until an undeclared war destroys the city, and Nina, after tracing Mateo’s last steps to his death in Tel Aviv, ends up in Berlin, where the European Union is found in the shambles of its own history. From Punta del Este to Paris, Berlin to Jerusalem, Brussels to Tokyo, the novel progresses into a dire near future of constant flight and fire as the siblings search for one another.
Defiant and dexterous, percussive and percolating with violent light, Berlin Atomized is Julia Kornberg’s napalm-ic debut—a tale about the end of the world, as told by the clear-eyed youth to which that world had been promised.
A kinetic, globetrotting novel following three siblings—Jewish and downwardly mobile—from 2001 to 2034, as they come of age against the major crises of the 21st century.
Berlin Atomized begins in Buenos Aires of the early 2000s with the self-baptisms of Nina Goldstein. She bathes too frequently, washing with fervor and repeating: “I am not asleep.” She grows up partying and taking undeserved siestas, while her eldest brother Jeremías is drawn into the city’s powder keg music scene, and the middle sibling, Mateo, learns of his terminal illness and prepares to join the IDF. Though Argentina faces the worst economic crisis in its history, the Goldsteins are being reared in a newly developed gated community that displaces working class families. Each sibling rehearses their escape from the capitalist Eden of their birth, unaware that the gated community will soon be underwater, and their family scattered all over the earth.
The second half of the novel takes place between 2018 and 2035, invoking and imagining possible futures for this existence in migration. Jeremías lives in Paris until an undeclared war destroys the city, and Nina, after tracing Mateo’s last steps to his death in Tel Aviv, ends up in Berlin, where the European Union is found in the shambles of its own history. From Punta del Este to Paris, Berlin to Jerusalem, Brussels to Tokyo, the novel progresses into a dire near future of constant flight and fire as the siblings search for one another.
Defiant and dexterous, percussive and percolating with violent light, Berlin Atomized is Julia Kornberg’s napalm-ic debut—a tale about the end of the world, as told by the clear-eyed youth to which that world had been promised.
Book Details
Format:
Hardcover
Price:
25 USD / 34 CAD
Published: 2024-12-03
ISBN: 9781662602856
Imprint:
Astra House
Page Count: 240
Trim Size: 5 x 7
"Julia Kornberg’s Berlin Atomized is a lucid and incredibly intriguing novel. It is both a coming-of-age journey, fueled by the restless rage of adolescence, and an odyssey into a starkly realistic vision of a world on the verge of collapse . . . From its first pages, the book immerses readers in a labyrinthine, razor-sharp prose . . . Existential and sadly prophetic, Berlin Atomized offers a glimpse of the looming collapse we face and the persistence of the human desire to feel alive despite it . . . With a biting voice, Kornberg crafts an all-encompassing narrative that transcends the boundaries of the traditional novel. By the end, one feels the need to return to the beginning, as though to confirm it is the same book that has unfolded all along."
—Jessica Ruetter, Jewish Book Council
"Kornberg, not yet 30, is a burgeoning talent. Her flickering, unflinching prose, which she herself helped translate from the original Spanish, makes you feel the siblings’ despair on every page . . . The universe inside this book is not one any of us would want to spend time in—but Kornberg constructs and inhabits it with care and command."
—E. Kinney Zalesne, Moment Magazine
"Berlin Atomized is a globetrotting romp, a contra-hegemonic assault on the bullshit of a decaying, cowardly bourgeoisie seeking comfort in a history that never quite ended and a moving, even harrowing bildungsroman."
—Federico Perelmuter, Full Stop
★ "Capturing a lost generation that feels both timeless and particular in its ironic fatalism and its various intellectual, artistic, and political responses to a broken world, this novel will be of interest to the international literary community. / A striking debut from a new global voice."
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"A slyly adventurous book with markings of Jennifer Egan’s A Visit From the Goon Squad . . . Berlin Atomized constantly surprises and charms."
—Sam Franzini, Our Culture
"Argentine writer Kornberg debuts with an evocative portrait of disaffected youth and an unsettling, war-torn near future . . . Readers will look forward to seeing what Kornberg does next."
—Publishers Weekly
"Remarkable, tender, funny...[Berlin Atomized is] a novel in fragments floating in the great events of immanent youth.”
—Pola Oloixarac, author of Mona
“A punk song of lost innocence and the madness of history, this brilliant debut brings a new name, and a potent style, to the table: Julia Kornberg.”
—Carlos Fonseca, author of Austral
“Ironic and always brilliant, tender and at the same time ruthless, with dazzling intelligence and whip-like sentences that showcase truth in every paragraph, this novel by Julia Kornberg imagines, invokes and exorcises the ghosts of her generation.”
—Federico Falco, author of A Perfect Cemetery