Berlin Bar Stories

Berlin Bar Stories

Through Berlin's kaleidoscope of bar stories, each standing alone like shots of vodka, trauma binds strangers and cities together. When two cousins reunite after thirty years, their shared darkness finally finds its way toward light. Berlin Bar Stories isn't a typical novel. It is made up of often standalone stories that gradually reveal the larger picture. Set mostly in Berlin’s diverse bars, the main storyline follows Laura, a Belgian costume designer who, in the early 2000s, sought refuge in Berlin’s chaotic embrace. Alongside the petite and timid Laura, the city of Berlin itself emerges as a second protagonist, its fractured history mirroring the woman's own trauma. Laura's carefully constructed safe life in Berlin takes a U-turn when her cousin Jan appears in her favourite bar forcing her to confront their shared childhood trauma. Through raw yet accessible prose, each chapter contributes to a larger story, connected by trauma but always illuminated by hope and a certain tenderness. Against a soundtrack of 80s music and Berlin's kinky, open-minded underground scene, the novel explores how cities, like people, can transform their scars into strength. " Berlin is a city with ADHD. A city on speed, a city that never sleeps, except in the early mornings. A city that is tough and warm and beautiful and ugly and social and anti-social and grey and colourful and open- minded and conservative and vanilla and dark chocolate, bursting with joy and depressive as fuck. Berlin is all of that. Berlin is all of us."