About this item
Why are we drawn to certain cities? Perhaps because of a story read in childhood. Or a chance teenage meeting. Or maybe simply because the place touches us, embodying in its tribes, towers and history an aspect of our understanding of what it means to be human. Paris is about romantic love. Lourdes equates with devotion. New York means energy. London is forever trendy.Berlin is all about volatility.Berlin is a city of fragments and ghosts, a laboratory of ideas, the fount of both the brightest and darkest designs of history's most bloody century. The once arrogant capital of Europe was devastated by Allied bombs, divided by the Wall, then reunited and reborn as one of the creative centers of the world. Today it resonates with the echo of lives lived, dreams realized, and evils executed with shocking intensity.
About the Author
Rory MacLean is one of Britain's most expressive and adventurous non-fiction writers. His books - which have been translated into a dozen languages -- include UK top tens Stalin's Nose and Under the Dragon as well as Berlin: Imagine a City, "the most extraordinary work of history I've ever read" according to the Washington Post which named it a Book of the Year. He has won awards from the Canada Council and the Arts Council of England and was nominated for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary prize. "MacLean must surely be the outstanding, and most indefatigable, traveller-writer of our time," wrote John le Carré. According to late John Fowles, his work "marvellously explains why literature still lives". Rory's 14th book, Pravda Ha Ha: True Travels to the End of Europe, marks the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. In his humanitarian work, Rory has written about the missing civilians of the Yugoslav Wars for the International Committee of the Red Cross, on divided Cyprus for the UN's Committee on Missing Persons and on North Korea for the British Council. He has blogged a quarter of a million words for the Goethe Institut and made over 50 BBC radio programmes. He is Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a former member of the Executive Committee of EnglishPEN.http://www.rorymaclean.com/
