Books: Death of a City

(2 of 2)

If there is a central character other than the city itself, it is Colonel Zecke, who at the outset of the debacle is ordered from a quiet staff job in Prague to Berlin. His final humiliation and disillusion mirror Plievier's own. Captured, interrogated by a Russian Red army veteran named Yegorov, he listens to the echo of his own cynicism. But with a flicker of conscience, Major General Yegorov lets Zecke escape.

As the German colonel walks through the city streets, it is only in the indestructible prostitutes of Berlin, and in its beer and schnapps, that he sees some kind of continuity.

Berlin is free of the Germans' all-too-frequent self-pity; it tells not only the death agonies of a city but the final ironic defeat of its philosophy of power. It is a book easily read, not easily forgotten.