Berlin stories - Philip Hensher

Berlin, in the words of Philip Hensher, editor of this anthology, 'has always been a city of desperate modernity', both in terms of urban architecture - largely a creation of the progressive 19th century, laid waste by World War II, temporary home of the infamous Wall - and in ways of living and behaving.

As early as the 1920s it was the gay capital of Europe; the Communist East/free West barrier presented unique problems for a divided population; and in the 1990s, in the aftermath of reunification, the cheap, run-down city became a vibrant centre for creative artists.

'The sense of making it up as you go along is never far away in Berlin.

' The stories in this volume are the product of this series of multiple rebirths from the viewpoint of both insiders and outsiders.

From pre- 1914 there are contributions from Theodor Fontane and Robert Walser; from the Weimar Republic, Alexander Doeblin, Vladimir Nabokov, Erich Kastner, Ernst Haffner, Irmgeud Keun and Christopher Isherwood; from the Third Reich, Thomas Wolfe, Hans Fallada and Heinz Rein; from the Cold War era, Peter Schneider, Thomas Brussig, Len Deighton, Christa Wolf and Ian McEwan; from post-reunification, Gunter Grass, Wladimir Kaminer, Chloe Aridjis, Uwe Timm, Kevin Barry, Jean-Philippe Toussaint and Jenny Erpenbeck.