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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'A Guide to Berlin” is the name of a short story written by Vladimir Nabokov in 1925, when he was a young man of 26, living in Berlin.
'A group of six international travellers, two Italians, two Japanese, an American and an Australian, meet in empty apartments in Berlin to share stories and memories. Each is enthralled in some way to the work of Vladimir Nabokov, and each is finding their way in deep winter in a haunted city. A moment of devastating violence shatters the group, and changes the direction of everyone's story.
'Brave and brilliant, A Guide to Berlin traces the strength and fragility of our connections through biographies and secrets. ' (Publication summary)
Notes
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Based on A Guide to Berlin by Vladimir Nabokov.
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Epigraph: '(What I hate) Folding an umbrella, not finding its secret button.' -Vladimir Nabokov, Interview, 1970
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Other Formats
- Also large print.
Works about this Work
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Gail Jones’s “The Ocean” (2013) and A Guide to Berlin (2015) : A Literary Challenge to Asylum Seekers’ Precarity
2020
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Journal of Postcolonial Writing , vol. 56 no. 4 2020; (p. 532-546)'Gail Jones’s fiction has received major critical attention due to its engagement with trauma, memory, modernity, the visual arts, and the Australian process of Reconciliation. This article seeks to extend the focus of research on Jones’s work by looking at her little-discussed representation of forced migration. For this purpose, it examines how Jones’s 2013 short story “The Ocean” and 2015 novel A Guide to Berlin respectively tackle the 2001 refugee Tampa affair and the 2013 Lampedusa refugee tragedy. It first offers an overview of the precarity suffered by contemporary asylum seekers and refugees and how this has been explored and fictionalized by contemporary writers. It then analyses and discusses the main narrative and stylistic strategies that Jones uses in order to represent the ties that bind together refugees and non-refugees in mutually dependent relationships, which challenge Australian and European governments’ fostered xenophobia aimed at tightening border controls.' (Publication abstract)
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Europe as Alternative Space in Contemporary Australian Fiction by Carey, Tsiolkas and Jones
2019
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Journal of the European Association for Studies of Australia , vol. 10 no. 2 2019;'This article investigates imaginings of Europe in contemporary Australian fiction in order to explore whether (traveling to) Europe provides alternative points of reference to discourses on nation, belonging, and identity beyond the (settler) postcolonial. The article sets out to compare recent works by Peter Carey, Christos Tsiolkas and Gail Jones who narrate Europe against a wide range of backgrounds, covering diverse diasporic, migratory and expatriate experiences, in order to explore the role of Europe as an alternative space, and of European modernities in particular, in the Australian literary imagination. Concentrating on Jack Maggs (1997), Dead Europe (2005) and A Guide to Berlin (2015), the article has a threefold focus: Firstly, it analyses the representation of European spaces and explores how the three novels draw attention to multiple modernities within and beyond Europe. Secondly, it demonstrates how all three novels, in their own way, reveal European modernities to be haunted by its other, i.e. death, superstition, ghosts, or the occult. Thirdly, these previous findings will be synthesized in order to determine how the three novels relate Europe to Australia. Do they challenge or perpetuate the protagonists’ desire for Europe as an ‘imaginary homeland’? Do references to Europe support the construction of national identity in the works under review, or do these references rather point to the emergence of multiple or transnational identities?'
Source: Abstract.
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The Vladimir Nabokov Book Club
2016
single work
essay
— Appears in: Antipodes , June vol. 30 no. 1 2016; (p. 227-228)
— Review of A Guide to Berlin 2015 single work novel'“The past is a foreign country,” as L. P. Hartley once famously wrote, and Gail Jones’s novel A Guide to Berlin suggests that Hartley’s famous dictum can also be inverted: that we see foreign countries mainly through the prism of the past and that to travel to another country is thus to immerse oneself in history. Certainly, the lonely expatriates who make up Jones’s cast seem more at home in the past than in the present.' (Introduction)
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Gail Jones : A Guide to Berlin
2015
single work
review
— Appears in: The Newtown Review of Books , December 2015;
— Review of A Guide to Berlin 2015 single work novel -
Speak, Memory
2015
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , September no. 374 2015; (p. 10)
— Review of A Guide to Berlin 2015 single work novel
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Review : A Guide to Berlin
2015
single work
review
— Appears in: The Monthly , September no. 115 2015; (p. 57)
— Review of A Guide to Berlin 2015 single work novel -
Nabokov Casts a Long Shadow
2015
single work
review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 12-13 September 2015; (p. 20)
— Review of A Guide to Berlin 2015 single work novel -
Well Read
2015
single work
review
— Appears in: The Advertiser , 29 August 2015; (p. 28)
— Review of A Guide to Berlin 2015 single work novel -
Speaking of the Past and Nabokov in a Chilly Berlin
2015
single work
review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 19-20 September 2015; (p. 29) The Sunday Age , 20 September 2015; (p. 29)
— Review of A Guide to Berlin 2015 single work novel -
Speak, Memory
2015
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , September no. 374 2015; (p. 10)
— Review of A Guide to Berlin 2015 single work novel -
Gail Jones
Susan Wyndham
(interviewer),
2015
single work
interview
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 8-9 August 2015; (p. 24) The Saturday Age , 8-9 August 2015; (p. 24) 'The author’s fascination with new places spurred her into writing an unplanned novel in Germany.' -
Gail Jones’s “The Ocean” (2013) and A Guide to Berlin (2015) : A Literary Challenge to Asylum Seekers’ Precarity
2020
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Journal of Postcolonial Writing , vol. 56 no. 4 2020; (p. 532-546)'Gail Jones’s fiction has received major critical attention due to its engagement with trauma, memory, modernity, the visual arts, and the Australian process of Reconciliation. This article seeks to extend the focus of research on Jones’s work by looking at her little-discussed representation of forced migration. For this purpose, it examines how Jones’s 2013 short story “The Ocean” and 2015 novel A Guide to Berlin respectively tackle the 2001 refugee Tampa affair and the 2013 Lampedusa refugee tragedy. It first offers an overview of the precarity suffered by contemporary asylum seekers and refugees and how this has been explored and fictionalized by contemporary writers. It then analyses and discusses the main narrative and stylistic strategies that Jones uses in order to represent the ties that bind together refugees and non-refugees in mutually dependent relationships, which challenge Australian and European governments’ fostered xenophobia aimed at tightening border controls.' (Publication abstract)
-
Europe as Alternative Space in Contemporary Australian Fiction by Carey, Tsiolkas and Jones
2019
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Journal of the European Association for Studies of Australia , vol. 10 no. 2 2019;'This article investigates imaginings of Europe in contemporary Australian fiction in order to explore whether (traveling to) Europe provides alternative points of reference to discourses on nation, belonging, and identity beyond the (settler) postcolonial. The article sets out to compare recent works by Peter Carey, Christos Tsiolkas and Gail Jones who narrate Europe against a wide range of backgrounds, covering diverse diasporic, migratory and expatriate experiences, in order to explore the role of Europe as an alternative space, and of European modernities in particular, in the Australian literary imagination. Concentrating on Jack Maggs (1997), Dead Europe (2005) and A Guide to Berlin (2015), the article has a threefold focus: Firstly, it analyses the representation of European spaces and explores how the three novels draw attention to multiple modernities within and beyond Europe. Secondly, it demonstrates how all three novels, in their own way, reveal European modernities to be haunted by its other, i.e. death, superstition, ghosts, or the occult. Thirdly, these previous findings will be synthesized in order to determine how the three novels relate Europe to Australia. Do they challenge or perpetuate the protagonists’ desire for Europe as an ‘imaginary homeland’? Do references to Europe support the construction of national identity in the works under review, or do these references rather point to the emergence of multiple or transnational identities?'
Source: Abstract.
Awards
- 2016 shortlisted Voss Literary Prize
- 2016 shortlisted Western Australian Premier's Book Awards — Fiction
- 2016 longlisted Davitt Award — Best Adult Crime Novel
- 2016 longlisted Kibble Literary Awards — Nita Kibble Literary Award
- 2016 shortlisted New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards — Christina Stead Prize for Fiction
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Berlin,
cGermany,cWestern Europe, Europe,