Berlin Atomized
A Novel
by Julia Kornberg
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Pub Date Dec 03 2024 | Archive Date Dec 17 2024
Astra Publishing House | Astra House
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Description
A kinetic, globetrotting novel following three siblings—Jewish and downwardly mobile—from 2001 to 2034, as they come of age against the major crises of the 21st century.
Berlin Atomized begins in Buenos Aires of the early 2000s with the self-baptisms of Nina Goldstein. She bathes too frequently, washing with fervor and repeating: “I am not asleep.” She grows up partying and taking undeserved siestas, while her eldest brother Jeremías is drawn into the city’s powder keg music scene, and the middle sibling, Mateo, learns of his terminal illness and prepares to join the IDF. Though Argentina faces the worst economic crisis in its history, the Goldsteins are being reared in a newly developed gated community that displaces working class families. Each sibling rehearses their escape from the capitalist Eden of their birth, unaware that the gated community will soon be underwater, and their family scattered all over the earth.
The second half of the novel takes place between 2018 and 2035, invoking and imagining possible futures for this existence in migration. Jeremías lives in Paris until an undeclared war destroys the city, and Nina, after tracing Mateo’s last steps to his death in Tel Aviv, ends up in Berlin, where the European Union is found in the shambles of its own history. From Punta del Este to Paris, Berlin to Jerusalem, Brussels to Tokyo, the novel progresses into a dire near future of constant flight and fire as the siblings search for one another.
Defiant and dexterous, percussive and percolating with violent light, Berlin Atomized is Julia Kornberg’s napalm-ic debut—a tale about the end of the world, as told by the clear-eyed youth to which that world had been promised.
Advance Praise
"Berlin Atomized is the world bridged, coupled, and made fast -- by the latest lost generation and by Julia Kornberg's border-and-genre-crossing talent, as restless as a flame." —Joshua Cohen, author of the Pulitzer Prize and National Jewish Book Award winning The Netanyahus
“[In Berlin Atomized, Julia Kornberg] imagines, summons, and exorcizes the ghosts of her generation ahead of time.” —Federico Falco, author of A Perfect Cemetery
“[Berlin Atomized] is the Juvenilia [classic 1884 novel by Miguel Cané] of the 21st century. Its axes are everyday life and the Great Events of Time, which youth and the social level of its characters make extraordinary. There are terrorist attacks in Paris, the death of Bin Laden: a unique approach to the fashionable autofictional genre . . . There is in Berlin Atomized a solid form of writing and narrative decisions that are remarkable for the author’s young age. Kornberg wrote the book that she wanted to write, not the one that she could: at 21, she exercises a literature that exhibits the optimism of her own will.” —Pola Oloixarac, author of Mona
“In her sharp writing, Kornberg exposes the truths of an entire generation. The idealism of youth, sufficient to accuse the world of magnificent injustices, from those that come out of newspapers. A selective idealism, that chooses to fight, exclusively, the battles of the first world. [...] At once mobilizing and reflective, Berlin Atomized is the story of a generation stuck in the middle of a war that is both internal and external, which pushes it to live in constant flight.” —Martina Vogelfang, La Primera Piedra
“Kornberg seems to be writing for a new kind of reader, one who is active and open to work through a text that, by subverting expectations, opens itself up to new and different literary experiences.” —Nora Méndez, Reading in Translation
“Kornberg is a great social observer: she has the gift of taking in what is happening around her and digesting it at an unusual speed. Her writing is risky, crude, intelligent. In her most incisive observations, she is also very funny.” —L’Officiel (Argentina)
Marketing Plan
MARKETING AND PUBLICITY PLANS • Cover reveal on Astra House social media • National media campaign including print, radio, podcasts, and online coverage • Pitch for feature stories, interviews, and profiles in major publications • Select author and translator events including indie bookstores and festivals • Robust awards campaign • Targeted outreach to publications focused on translations, speculative literature, Latin American literature, debut authors, Jewish literature, leftist literature, and Zillennial authors • Outreach to booksellers who champion new voices in translation • Library marketing and academic-targeted department guides and course adoption • Influencer outreach
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9781662602856 |
| PRICE | $25.00 (USD) |
| PAGES | 240 |
Links
Available on NetGalley
Featured Reviews
Stacey M, Reviewer
"Berlin Atomized" by Julia Kornberg is an extraordinary debut novel that captures the zeitgeist of the 21st century through the eyes of three unforgettable siblings. Spanning continents and decades, this kinetic narrative is a masterclass in storytelling, blending personal and global crises with a deft hand.
From the vibrant streets of Buenos Aires to the war-torn remnants of Paris, Kornberg's prose is both defiant and dexterous, pulling readers into a world that is as tumultuous as it is beautifully rendered. Each character is meticulously crafted, their journeys interwoven with the historical and socio-economic upheavals of our time.
Nina's poignant self-baptisms, Jeremías's immersion in the explosive music scene, and Mateo's tragic preparation to join the IDF, all serve as compelling entry points into a story that is as much about personal survival as it is about familial bonds. The novel’s second half, exploring a future of constant migration and conflict, is both a chilling prophecy and a hopeful testament to human resilience.
Kornberg's narrative is percussive and percolating with violent light, making "Berlin Atomized" not just a novel, but an experience. This is a tale about the end of the world, told by a generation to whom that world was promised, and it is nothing short of mesmerizing. For readers of Catherine Lacey and Joshua Cohen, this is a must-read.
Reviewer 725963
A unique and semi-speculative (dystopian) take on many of the issues we're seeing contemporary fiction tackle today--precarity in all of its forms, from relationships to institutions to art and creativity itself. Difficult to summarize, but well worth the read. I also really enjoyed the framing device that begins and ends the novel. 4/5 stars.
Abby S, Reviewer
A well written novel dystopian engrossing a debut by a very talented author.Unique interesting I was drawn in from first to last page,#netgalley #astrahouse.
Rusty S, Educator
This book was very unique. It took me a little while to understand what was going on, but once I did I flew through it. It was a good read. The characters were at times frustrating and misunderstood, so you have to read this book with a lot of empathy.
Luke L, Reviewer
A genre bender that encapsulates the transformative years of youth, political mania, and apocalyptic collapse! where Paris is burning, Berlin is falling, and the world is on the brink of falling apart… once again?! is there a cycle to the turmoil? would we all be better if censorship ceased to exist and net neutrality gave way to the ‘darkest iterations of the human soul’… the blood and guts on full display?
there’s a lot to discuss within this short novel and felt that I was on hyperspeed throughout the character building and inner ebb and flow of our main character, Nina. This is by no means a perfect novel but with the writing being exquisite, an experimental approach being made successfully and its’ overarching, expansive themes.. thinking it’s 5 star worthy!!
Huge thank you to Astra House and NetGalley for the arc!!!
Reviewer 1246622
Thanks to NetGalley and Astra House for letting me review Berlin Atomized by Julia Kornberg.
First off, the cover is bomb. The beautiful bright green against the red and pink/purple colors of the font are to die for, and if I saw this book in person I would totally pick it up off of the shelf based on that alone. But I'd keep reading thanks to Kornberg's gorgeous prose.
In Berlin Atomized, we follow a family rooted in Buenos Aires, the Goldsteins. The Goldstein siblings are acted upon, much like electrons or atomic particles, by visible and invisible forces--the economic strife of Argentina and the class divides that come with it; a brother's terminal illness and commitment to an idealistic militarism; an obsession with cleanliness and baptism. The novel moves into the future, moving through 2035, and in its explorations of a somber vision of the future, considers how those forces, too, act on, and react to, the family and siblings in crisis and later adulthood. Kornberg's prose has a scalpel's precision--razor-sharp, incisive, and careful in a way that sits with a reader long after the book is put down.
I loved this novel and can't wait to read what Julia Kornberg writes next.
Ezra F, Librarian
Reminiscent of "Kairos" by Jenny Erpenbeck in its atmospheric, character-driven style and its portrayal of young lives coming of age against a background of decline and decay. This novel will be a touchstone among international literary fiction in translation for years to come.
Jamie B, Reviewer
I liked this book more than I expected to, The main characters, three rich kids filled with angst over being well-off, seem to be trying everything they can think of to throw away any resources or advantages they had as kids, to embrace slumming as a more authentic lifestyle. I suppose there are other ways to summarize this book, but that was this book in a nutshell for me. Nonetheless, the storytelling was compelling enough that I was not struggling to finish this book. The cover is still ugly, and does not seem to match the aesthetics of the story at all, but the novel was a solid 4 stars for me.
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