Berlin childhood around 1900

the long version

Berlin Childhood around 1900 remained unpublished during Walter Benjamin's lifetime. Now translated into English for the first time in book form, on the basis of the recently discovered final version that contains the author's own arrangement of a suite of luminous vignettes, it can be more widely appreciated as one of the masterpieces of twentieth-century prose writing. This book is also one of Benjamin's great city texts, bringing to life the cocoon of his childhood--the parks, streets, schoolrooms, and interiors of an emerging metropolis. It reads the city as palimpsest and labyrinth, revealing unexpected lyricism in the heart of the familiar.