Walking in Berlin: a flaneur in the capital

`Like a private invitation back to the city's most beguiling era ... Irreverent and yet always enthusiastic, [Hessel's] 88-year-old love letter to this city is a true map of the traces of a bygone world.'

`Captures a portrait of a city on the brink of irrevocable change ... Hessel was both detailed chronicler of the present, and a man keenly aware of the city's history ... Apt then that Walking in Berlin now joins this historical hall of fame.'

`[Walking in Berlin] is not only an important record of old Berlin; it is a testimony to its enduring spirit.'

`An absolutely epic book, a walking remembrance.'

`Hessel's conversational style and subtle insights evoke Weimar Berlin and reveal a great deal about the Germany of his days.'

`Walking in Berlin is a magical mystery tour of a city on the brink of upheaval. Hessel may have wandered haphazardly but he wrote with purpose, never once losing his way.'

`Hessel is a modest master of spontaneous observation.'

`Hessel's warm enthusiasm for his home town informs every page, and provides the reader with a geographical guide that still holds value, despite the enormous changes in the city. More than that, though, it evokes a time that, although just about within living memory, seems almost as remote as the nineteenth-century Berlin of Schinkel.'

'A newly rediscovered treasure.'

`To this day, there is no better Berlin travel guide.'

`Beautiful ... a classic observation of the German city in the late 1920s that illuminates many of the historic shadows and provides a wonderful map for modern-day wanderings.'

`When you think of Berlin in the 1920s, you cannot avoid thinking of the storyteller, critic and translator Franz Hessel.'

`Walking in Berlin can be read lightly as a postcard from the past; it should be read seriously as an inexhaustible record of all that Berlin was and might have been, as an enthralling guide to a wealth of references, sidetracks, lost paths ... This is a first encounter with the myth and the reality of that intangible fantastic beast of a city.'

`Hessel is a feisty, clever, and witty guide to Berlin; his prose is animated and sumptuous and his perceptions glamorously lyrical. For anyone who knows the geography of Berlin, this book is an especial treat.'

`A timely ode to a good meander and [Hessel's] home city [Berlin].'

`Hessel's wanderings in the Weimar-era German capital mix social commentary with artistic and architectural analysis ... his musings offer a fresh set of eyes.'

`[A] sprawling panorama of cultural memory and miscellany, a vibrant catalog of metropolitan life, and a seismograph of a city on the verge of disaster.'