Käsebier Takes Berlin

✍ Scribed by Gabriele Tergit

• Book ID: 112050731
• Publisher: New York Review Books
• Year: 2019
• Tongue: en-US
• Weight: 204 KB
• Category: Fiction
• ISBN-13: 9781681372730

✦ Synopsis

In English for the first time, a biting satirical novel about an untalented, self-delusioned celebrity who seduces all of Weimar Berlin.
In Berlin, 1930, the name Kasebier is on everyone's lips. A literal combination of the German words for "cheese" and "beer," it's an unglamorous name for an unglamorous man--a small-time crooner who performs nightly on a shabby stage for laborers, secretaries, and shopkeepers. Until the press shows up.
In the blink of an eye, this everyman is made a star: a star who can sing songs for a troubled time. Margot Weissmann, the arts patron, hosts champagne breakfasts for Kasebier; Muschler the banker builds a theater in his honor; Willi Frachter, a parvenu writer, makes a mint off Kasebier-themed business ventures and books. All the while, the journalists who catapulted Kasebier to fame watch the monstrous media machine churn in amazement--and are aghast at the demons they have unleashed.
In...