Mitch Cohen

This edition of Berlin, anthology of life in the Divided City (isbn 9780930012649) is a modified reprint of the original publication in 1984, when the Berlin Wall was an ever-present reminder of the Cold War. Mitch Cohen, who edited this volume, was an American living in West Berlin, an island in the middle of East Germany. As an American, he could travel back and forth freely through the Brandenburg Gate. As he did, he made friends, shared stories, and gathered material in prose, poetry, and art, from both East and West German writers. Although the Wall is barely mentioned in the stories, the overwhelming reality was that every action, every friend, every utterance, every enrollment or activity had a political overtone. Your neighbors were watching, you never knew who would be a snitch. And that was true on both sides of the Wall. As it was, no East German press could have published it, and no West German press would touch it. But a small press in California, with the aid of Mitch Cohen's diligence and vision, could bring to life this remarkable situation that, a mere five years later, would witness people who had had enough, and they literally took the Wall down by hand, piece by piece, from both sides. The reprint edition includes all authors who continued their careers, with updates of more recent work to their bibliographies.… (lisätietoja)