A Guide to Berlin

A Guide to Berlin

"A Guide to Berlin" is a short story by Vladimir Nabokov, first published in 1925. It was later translated by him and his son into English and included in the collection "Details of a Sunset and Other Stories" (1976).

Plot summary

In the story the narrator recounts to a friend his trip that day to the zoo. In the short sections--"the Pipes," "The Streetcar," "Work," "Eden," and "the Pub"--he describes the life of the city in vivid detail. In "the Streetcar," he notes that it is the responsibility of literature to "portray ordinary objects as they will be reflected in the kindly mirrors of future times; to find in the objects around us the fragrant tenderness that only posterity will discern and appreciate..."

His friend in the pub pronounces Berlin a "boring, expensive city," and does not understand the narrator’s preoccupation with streetcars, tortoises, or a child’s view from the pub window.


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