CITY · GERMANYBooks set in Berlin
52.520, 13.405
62 books · 50 authors · 1894–2025
62 books here
Most-set authors
Hans Fallada (3) · Jenny Erpenbeck (3) · Theodor Fontane (2) · Joseph Kanon (2) · Daniel Kehlmann (2) · Christopher Isherwood (2)
Genres
literary fiction (13) · thriller & suspense (7) · mystery & crime (3) · romance (3) · historical fiction (2)
Books set here
Set in Berlin (53)
A Woman in Berlin
Anonymous
1945 Soviet occupation diary
Babylon Berlin
Volker Kutscher
Weimar Republic crime 1929
Before the Storm
Theodor Fontane
Prussian court and nobility
Book of Clouds
Chloe Aridjis
post-reunification Berlin
Child 44
Tom Rob Smith
1945 Reichstag flag-raising flashback, Leo's Red Army service
Die Effingers
Gabriele Tergit
Berlin family saga 1878–1948
Effi Briest
Theodor Fontane
Effi and Innstetten live here
Every Man Dies Alone
Hans Fallada
Nazi-era Berlin apartment block
Fabian: The Story of a Moralist
Erich Kästner
Weimar Republic decline
Fatherland
Robert Harris
Alternate-history Nazi Berlin 1964
Funeral in Berlin
Len Deighton
Cold War spy setting
Go, Went, Gone
Jenny Erpenbeck
refugee hunger strike Alexanderplatz
Good Girl
Aria Aber
Berlin club scene
Grand Hotel
Vicki Baum
Weimar-era Grand Hotel Berlin — intersecting lives of guests across class and ambition
Half-Blood Blues
Esi Edugyan
jazz scene 1930s-40s
Herr Lehmann
Sven Regener
Kreuzberg before Wall fell
In the Garden of Beasts
Erik Larson
1933-34 Berlin under Nazi rule; Tiergarten, US Embassy, Reichstag
Leaving Berlin
Joseph Kanon
divided postwar Berlin where spy navigates East and West in 1948
Little Man, What Now?
Hans Fallada
1930s Weimar Berlin
Look Who's Back
Timur Vermes
Hitler wakes in modern Berlin, 2011
Madonna in a Fur Coat
Sabahattin Ali
Weimar-era Berlin romance
March Violets
Philip Kerr
Nazi Berlin, 1936 Olympics
Mephisto
Klaus Mann
Nazi-era State Theatre
Mr Norris Changes Trains
Christopher Isherwood
Weimar Berlin rise of Nazism
November 1918
Alfred Döblin
German Revolution 1918-1919
Ponyboy
Eliot Duncan
Berlin where Ponyboy sinks into drugs and falls for Gabriel; central to this trans-masculine debut longlisted for the Na
Stern 111
Lutz Seiler
post-Wende squatter scene
Summer House, Later
Judith Hermann
Berlin and its surrounding countryside — lakes, rivers, and poorly heated apartments — where Judith Hermann's nine stori
The Artificial Silk Girl
Irmgard Keun
Weimar Berlin nightlife
The Berlin Stories
Christopher Isherwood
Primary setting — Weimar-era Berlin
The Director
Daniel Kehlmann
Nazi-era Berlin
The End of Days
Jenny Erpenbeck
Present-day Berlin; final section completes the sweep of the 20th century
The Gift
Vladimir Nabokov
Russian emigre writer in 1920s Berlin
The Good German
Joseph Kanon
Postwar occupied Berlin, 1945 Potsdam Conference backdrop
The Innocent
Ian McEwan
Operation Gold tunnel Cold War
The Lilac People
Milo Todd
Weimar-era queer Berlin; Institut fur Sexualwissenschaft
The Luzhin Defense
Vladimir Nabokov
chess genius émigré setting
The Museum of Unconditional Surrender
Dubravka Ugrešić
Croatian exile in Berlin, fragments of memory and displacement
The Right Bank
Joseph Roth
Weimar-era Berlin narrative
The Sleepwalkers
Hermann Broch
Part 1 (Pasenow 1888) and Part 3 Berlin storyline
The Wall Jumper
Peter Schneider
Divided city, Wall crossings
Too Far Afield
Gunter Grass
Post-Wall reunification Berlin, 1989–1990s
When We Cease to Understand the World
Benjamín Labatut
wartime science, German physicists
Winter of the World
Ken Follett
1933 Berlin where the Nazi rise to power drives one of the novel's five family storylines — beginning of a 16-year WWII
Zoo Station
David Downing
spy thriller in 1939 Berlin
Berlin Alexanderplatz
Alfred Döblin
Weimar Berlin working-class district
A Book of Memories
Péter Nádas
Primary contemporary setting: Hungarian narrator in romantic triangle
Heroes Like Us
Thomas Brussig
Primary setting — East Berlin, GDR, rise of the Berlin Wall fall
In Times of Fading Light
Eugen Ruge
four generations under GDR
Kairos
Jenny Erpenbeck
GDR love affair setting
The Quest for Christa T.
Christa Wolf
GDR, Christa T.’s life from war through East German disillusionment
The Short End of the Sonnenallee
Thomas Brussig
Sonnenallee street, East Berlin, late 1970s–80s; adolescent Micha lives on the short dead-end stub of the street abuttin
Perfection
Vincenzo Latronico
Berlin district, protagonists' home for most of novel
Also featuring Berlin (9)
Alone in Berlin
Hans Fallada
Nazi-era Berlin apartment block
Blackouts
Justin Torres
One of Jan Gay's research cities in the historical thread
Dark Princess
W.E.B. Du Bois
Matthew Townes moves to Berlin after being expelled from his US medical school
Less
Andrew Sean Greer
almost falls to his death
Measuring the World
Daniel Kehlmann
Berlin 1828; Gauss and Humboldt finally meet here
Parallel Stories
Péter Nádas
Opening scene 1989 Berlin; student finds a corpse as the Wall comes down
The Secret Hours
Mick Herron
1994 Berlin, classified intelligence operation ending in tragedy
The Secret Pilgrim
John le Carré
Cold War episode location
Y/N
Esther Yi
Narrator's starting point — Korean American woman in Berlin
Notable locations in Berlin
East Berlin8Alexanderplatz2Prenzlauer Berg2Alte Nationalgalerie1East Berlin1Kreuzberg1Neukoelln1Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin1Sonnenallee, East Berlin1
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