Viking lands ‘masterpiece’ Berlin book from McKay

Viking has landed Berlin, a biography of the city and its inhabitants by Sinclair McKay.

Publishing director Daniel Crewe acquired world rights from Anna Power at Johnson and Alcock. Viking sold US rights to St Martin’s Press, and Johnson and Alcock have sold rights in seven languages so far. Berlin will be published in hardback in May 2022 and in paperback in spring 2023. 

McKay is the author of Dresden (Penguin), The Secret Life of Bletchley Park (Aurum Press) and The Secret Listeners (Aurum Press). Berlin will examine the role the city played in the 20th century from the perspective of everyday people. McKay draws attention to new facets of well-known characters, from the idealistic scientist Albert Einstein to Nazi architect Albert Speer, incorporating “never-before-seen” first-person accounts. He introduces us to the spectrum of life in Berlin, including office worker Mechtild Evers and Reinhart Cruger, a 12-year-old boy in 1941 who witnessed the horror of the Gestapo.

Viking wrote: “You cannot understand the 20th century without understanding Berlin, and you cannot understand Berlin without understanding the experiences of its people. Drawing on a staggering breadth of culture–from art to film, opera to literature, science to architecture–McKay’s latest masterpiece shows us this hypnotic city as never before.”

Crewe said: “With his incredible breadth of reference, wonderful eye for compelling individuals, and uncanny ability to get under a city’s skin, this book will tell the full story of Berlin and its role in the history of the 20th century. As with his bestseller Dresden, it will be an account both epic in scope and touching in its human detail. It’s a perfect Father’s Day gift.”

McKay added: “Berlin has long haunted the international imagination. Its story throughout the 20th century was alternately horrifying and seductive. Here was a city that could hold within itself the extremes of shadows and light, of inspirational art and brute violence, of enlightened cosmopolitanism and raw racial hate, of dazzling science and atavistic cruelty. The stark duality extended beyond the apocalyptic ordeal and ruins of 1945 through a city torn in two.”