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Berlin: Imagine a City de Rory MacLean

Berlin: Imagine a City

Autor Rory MacLean
en Limba Engleză Paperback – 9 apr 2015

Considerăm acest volum o monografie narativă atipică, ce refuză cronologia aridă în favoarea unei biografii organice a uneia dintre cele mai volatile capitale europene. Berlin nu este doar o istorie a zidurilor și a ideologiilor, ci o reconstituire a spiritului berlinez prin vocea a douăzeci și una de figuri emblematice, de la mercenari scoțieni din armata prusacă la proiecțiile fantasmagorice ale proiectului Germania. Notăm cu interes modul în care Rory MacLean distilează cinci secole de transformări radicale — de la ascensiunea puterii prusace la devastarea bombelor aliate și efervescența reunificării — într-o serie de portrete vii care umanizează datele istorice. Comparabil cu Berlin. Portrait of a City de Taschen în rigoarea documentării, volumul de față se diferențiază prin natura sa literară; în timp ce ediția Taschen mizează pe forța vizuală a fotografiei, MacLean folosește narațiunea pentru a explora profunzimile psihologice ale orașului. Stilul este precis, dar impregnat de o sensibilitate pe care autorul a rafinat-o în lucrări anterioare precum Under the Dragon. Dacă în acea operă investiga traumele Birmaniei, aici se folosește de propria experiență în Berlinul de Vest și de Est pentru a oferi o perspectivă rară, de martor și analist deopotrivă. Recomandăm această lectură pentru structura sa fragmentată, dar coerentă, care reușește să captureze esența unei metropole care s-a reinventat constant după fiecare prăbușire.

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Specificații

ISBN-13: 9781780224589
ISBN-10: 1780224583
Pagini: 432
Dimensiuni: 128 x 196 x 28 mm
Greutate: 0.32 kg
Editura: Orion Publishing Group
Colecția W&N
Locul publicării:London, United Kingdom

De ce să citești această carte

Această carte se adresează cititorilor pasionați de istorie urbană și antropologie culturală care caută mai mult decât o listă de date cronologice. Veți câștiga o înțelegere profundă a modului în care imaginația individuală a modelat destinul Berlinului. Este o resursă esențială pentru a înțelege complexitatea Germaniei moderne, oferind un context uman indispensabil pentru studiile academice sau pentru o vizită documentată în capitala Germaniei.

Despre autor

Rory MacLean este unul dintre cei mai apreciați scriitori contemporani de non-ficțiune, fiind ales membru al Royal Society of Literature. Opera sa a fost distinsă cu premiul Yorkshire Post Best First Work și a fost nominalizată la premii prestigioase precum International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Cu o carieră ce pendulează între cinematografie și literatură, MacLean a colaborat cu figuri legendare precum David Bowie și a scris pentru BBC. Experiența sa directă în Berlin, trăită în ambele sectoare ale orașului înainte de cădere, îi conferă autorității necesare pentru a scrie această biografie definitorie a metropolei.

Descriere

The first single-volume biography of Berlin, one of the world's great cities - told via twenty-one portraits, from medieval times to the twenty-first century.

A city devastated by Allied bombs, divided by a Wall, then reunited and reborn, Berlin today resonates with the echo of lives lived, dreams realised and evils executed. No other city has repeatedly been so powerful and fallen so low. And few other cities have been so shaped and defined by individual imaginations.

Through vivid portraits spanning five centuries, Rory MacLean reveals the varied and rich history of Berlin, from its brightest to its darkest moments. We encounter an ambitious prostitute refashioning herself as a princess, a Scottish mercenary fighting for the Prussian Army, Marlene Dietrich flaunting her sexuality and Hitler fantasising about the mega-city Germania. The result is a uniquely imaginative biography of one of the world's most volatile yet creative cities.

Recenzii

(a) wonderful book
Berlin vies with London, currently, as the coolest city on the planet. MacLean's wonderfully knowledgable overview of the city's history helps explain the place's enduring fascination.
"Berlin: Portrait of a City Through the Centuries" is an extraordinary work of history. To call it history is, in fact, reductive. There's some historical analysis, quite a lot of fiction, some philosophizing, lashings of wit and a fair dose of invective. It's a work of imagination, reflection, reverence, perplexity and criticism that reveals as much about the author's precocious mind as it does about the city he adores. The book's most profound feature, however, is its beautiful writing - phrases of transcendent rhythm force the reader to reverse and read again. Never mind that the logic is occasionally shaky and the facts sometimes slip, the prose is perfect. MacLean calls Berlin "the capital of reinvention." This explains why his biography of the city is not about the place per se, but about those who shaped it or were shaped by it: Berlin as a canvas on which people paint their dreams.
This grandly ambitious work has a noble intention: to re-create through art and imagination the whole historic presence of a great capital, from its beginnings to its present day...Maclean's book is a wonderful achievement, not justly to be summarised in the few hundred words of a review. but hauntingly representing, as in a tangled dream, 600 years of history.
A brilliant new history of Berlin...What makes MacLean's history of Berlin stand out is that this is an intensely human document, a rich tapestry spanning five centuries and woven together through intimate portraits of 21 if its former inhabitants which collectively reveal the narrative of the city....This is how I love history to be told, through the people who live it...a fascinating book.
The best history is biography: the story of the people who shaped and destroyed, entertained, beautified and murdered. Rory MacLean imagines Berlin through its inhabitants.
Rory MacLean offers an entirely beguiling and original portrait of Berlin. His is a highly unusual history told in a variety of forms by 'vital anonymous players in history's grand drama' alongside some of the major thinkers, dreamers, artists, warmongers and idealists who have shaped this eternally enthralling metropolis....a perfect companion for those about to discover, or attempting to make sense of, their own Berlin.
Rory MacLean's Berlin: Imagine a History is intelligent, entertaining and ambitious...MacLean has written a great book about Berliners.
MacLean's original and well-researched vignettes makes up a mosaic and kaleidoscope. MacLean is a highly visual writer, and his dialogue is crisp and believable. Rory MacLean deserves to win all the prizes going.
[MacLean] writes with the lyricism of Bruce Chatwin and the traveller's eye of Marco Polo. He engages with his readers as if he is talking to an intelligent friend. Read this book if you already know Berlin, or will do one day.
The strength of MacClean's book is that he reveals how Berlin has served all of us as a multi-faceted prism, of time, of history, or artistic enterprise. The author is a non-academic historian wearing his knowledge lightly, sharing his experiences deftly.... He is a journalist too, and his style is concise, pithy, anecdotal. The book is more a collage than it is a chronology, and is stronger for it.
I loved it. It is such a beautiful way of understanding history, its stories are so vivaciously told, it is so heartfelt, so intelligent, and so talkative a book. So many of the characters do end up talking to each other, and the author is eavesdropping. It paints the past and the present, portrays Berlin as a portrait of someone you love. It is beautiful.
Berlin takes the form of 23 portraits of individuals...the text sings. A compelling piece about the industrialist and Weimar foreign minister Walter Rathenau is full of auguries of the nightmares of the 30s and 40s.
An atmospheric view of Berlin as seen through its people.
This ambitious work hauntingly uncovers 600 years of Berlin's history... MacLean shows how the city.. embodies "an essence of perpetual reinvention", propelled by inhabitants from Frederick the Great to Goebbels, Bach to Bowie.
A wonderful impressionistic portrait of this beguiling city.