Berlin Alexanderplatz
I just finished Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin yesterday and I think it just made it's way to the top of my all time favorites. Written in 1929 and set in post-WWI, pre-WWII Berlin, the book explores the theme of redemption with the backdrop of hopeless fate, casual poverty, and a criminal underbelly. There were times throughout the story that reminded me a shade of Les Miserable, but it leans a wee bit heavier into depravity - Franz Biberkopf representing some kind of brutal, violent, and wretched Jean Valjean.
I saved so many passages from the book. The writing is top notch in my opinion, some sort of stream of consciousness-ish style. Here's one of my favorites passages:
Everyone’s smoking, clouds of smoke from pipes and cigarettes and cigars fog the whole huge hall. When it gets too smoky for the smoke, it looks for a way out which, thanks to its lightness, it can, through chinks and holes and ventilator shafts, all of which are under instruction to see it out. Once outside, though, there’s only black night and freezing cold. Then the smoke regrets its impulsiveness, and oppose s its nature, but the ventilators turn only one way, and there’s nothing to be done about it. Too late. It’s subject to physical laws. The smoke’s not sure what it thinks about that, it tries to touch its brow and there’s nothing there, it wants to think and it can’t. The wind, the cold, the night, have it in their grip, and it is never seen again
Beautiful book. Devastating book.