Book of Clouds is a haunting, masterfully wrought debut novel about a young woman adrift in Berlin, where a string of fateful encounters leads to romance, violence, and revelation. Having escaped her overbearing family a continent away, Tatiana settles in Berlin and cultivates solitude while distancing herself from the city’s past. Yet the phantoms of Berlin—seeping in through the floorboards of her apartment, lingering in the abandoned subterranea—are more alive to her than the people she passes on her daily walks. When she takes a job transcribing notes for the reclusive historian Doktor Weiss, her life in Berlin becomes more complex—and more perilous. Through Weiss, she meets Jonas, a meteorologist who, as a child in the GDR, took solace in the sky’s constant shape-shifting, an antidote to his grim and unyielding reality. As their three paths intersect and merge, the contours of all their worlds change, culminating in an act of violence that will leave none of them untouched. Unfolding with the strange, charged logic of a dream, Book of Clouds is a profound portrait of a city forever in flux, and of the myths we cling to in order to give shape to our lives.
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Aridjis's lithe debut novel is a brooding, dreamy tale of a young Mexican woman in Berlin, burrowing an escape from the siblings and expectations awaiting her back home. Placing first in a nationwide language exam, university student Tatiana wins a year's room and board in Germany, quickly dissolving into Berlin life ("On some days I felt attached to the city and assimilated, on others like some kind of botched transplant with a few renegade veins") and deciding to stay on when the scholarship runs dry. After a series of odd jobs, Tatiana lands with Dr. Friedrich Weiss, an eccentric historian who needs an assistant to transcribe a number of his "mesmeric" dictations. A loner with a fertile imagination, Tatiana is well-suited to the job, and quickly grows absorbed; Weiss's obsession with Berlin's Nazi and Stasi past dovetails nicely with Tatiana's fascination with the city's underbelly. Ultimately, the characters and landmarks of this ephemeral novel (Tatiana included) never quite emerge from a fog of mystery, making this less a satisfying narrative than a lofty meditation on the power of what's obscured and unknowable.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
Named one of the 10 Best Books Set in Berlin by The Guardian (UK)
"Beautifully evocative." —Malcolm Burgess, The Guardian
"A hypnotic first novel . . . [Book of Clouds] has the power of dreams and still hasn't left me."--Junot Diaz, Salon.com (Best Books of 2009, Authors' Picks)
“First novels by young writers who see the world with a fresh, original vision and write about it with clarity and restraint are rare enough to begin with. When you add in the fact that Chloe Aridjis’s Book of Clouds is also a stunningly accurate portrait of Berlin, as well as a thoughtful portrayal of a young Mexican Jew drifting through her life abroad, this novel becomes required reading of the most pleasurable sort. . . . A book that has so much to recommend it, not least its ability to convey both actual and distorted realities at once.”—Wendy Lesser, The New York Times Book Review
“Spiked with a dreamlike urban surrealism. . . . Tatiana is deeply inhabited by her author, who moves calmly from one precinct to another in Tatiana's unusual mind. . . . Magic and poetry are everywhere in Book of Clouds . . . An unsettling atmosphere unlike anything in recent fiction.”—Regina Marler, Los Angeles Times
“Once in a while a book comes along and does what it’s meant to do. It carves out a space for itself in the memory and it settles there, changing the way we see the world. . . . Like Gogol, Chloe Aridjis is interested in caricatures of urbanity, the space between comedy and metaphysical horror, and the confrontation between character and our own atavistic fears. Quiet, brave, and utterly unique, [Book of Clouds] will disturb, satiate, and change the way you think.”—The Times (UK)
“A stirring and lyrical first novel by a young writer of immense talent.”—Paul Auster
“Exquisitely written, Book of Clouds is a perfect Berlin story for our unsettled times, and a remarkable debut.”—Francisco Goldman
“[An] exceptional debut novel . . . Readers who know Berlin will find Aridjis’s re-creation of it almost uncanny, achieved with great clarity of vision—you’re right there, every moment—but also with such economy, using just a few carefully observed details. Those who do not know the city will feel somehow sure they do by the end of the book. . . . Book of Clouds is a beautifully turned piece of writing of extraordinary assurance . . . and as natural as breathing. Both vivid and dreamlike, at once very precise in its images and also enchantingly broad-brush atmospheric, this is a debut more captivating than any I’ve read in some time.”—Daniel Hahn, The Independent
“Chloe Aridjis has achieved something quite astonishing in a first book by a young writer: a rethinking of one of our most complacent forms, the historical novel. . . . The writer [Aridjis] calls to mind is the Modernist Haruki Murakami, with his unsolved riddles and ultra-cool characters.”—Helen Rumbelow, The Times (UK)
“Aridjis is an insightful observer of post-reunification Berlin, its restless nightlife, its transient flea-markets, its shifting landscape of neglect and gentrification, the ghosts of its past – and the chilling rise of the far right. Her lyrical, restrained prose conjures a dream-like atmosphere that borders on magical realism. This haunting debut is a significant and memorable addition to the literature of a troubling city.”—CJ Schüler, The Independent
“Original and nuanced . . . Provocative . . . Like WG Sebald reborn as a young woman, [Tatiana] walks the [Berlin] streets . . . [as] the weight of history presses in. . . . [Book of Clouds is] an entirely refreshing portrait of young womanhood, it is unselfconscious, uncompromising, wholly authentic: a fraying mass of narrative loose ends, it is also somehow satisfying in its open-endedness. . . . A most unusual debut.”—Justine Jordan, The Guardian
“Fresh and original . . . A portrait of Berlin, a city famed for its richness and strangeness, hauntingly captured by Aridjis . . . [who] shares [Murakami’s] sense of dream-like wandering.”—Francesca Segal, The Observer
“Brave . . . Weighty in its intelligence and thoughtfulness. Aridjis pens an odd kind of love letter to Berlin . . . [in a] highly appealing writing style—which is clean and spare, restrained yet direct. . . . [Aridjis] impressively conjures Berlin as an essentially unknowable place in spite of all the history we think we know about it.”—Lesley McDowell, The Scotsman
“An extended pyschogeographical meditation on the tension between boundaries of all kinds and the spaces both within and outside them. . . . Book of Clouds is strongly reminiscent of Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy. . . . It’s so beautifully written and stylistically coherent: a thoughtful and sincere exploration of the ways in which cities encode and embody memory, to be savoured slowly and allowed to linger in the mind.”—F. T. Huffkin, Belletrista
“What a perfectly odd, summation-defying book this is. . . . Nothing can budge the reader once she has turned the first page.”—Beth Kephart Books
“Chloe Aridjis’s Berlin is full of nebulae. Clouds, fog, memory, the past—these atmospheric and historical forces surge up and surround the characters of Aridjis’s beautiful debut novel, Book of Clouds. . . . With episodes of delightful descriptive acuity . . . uncertainty might be Aridjis’s fictional specialty, but she captures it with rare incisiveness.”—Chloe Schama, B&N.com
“The opening is a knockout. . . . Aridjis beautifully captures Tatiana’s conflicting sense of certainty and impossibility . . . in this novel of ideas.”—Kirkus Reviews
“Book of Clouds is a post-Sebaldian, post-Benjamin peripatetic meditation, at once casual and deeply sourced, on post-Wall Berlin. . . . One of my favorites this year.”—Ali Smith, Times Literary Supplement (UK)
“Irresistible . . . Aridjis brings a bit of realism, a bit of wonder, a hint of darkness and true originality to this sharp, lyric and beguilingly strange tale of a life in flux. . . . [The novel] soars and shimmers through its assured writing, whimsical observations and its sheer ease. . . . Book of Clouds is what happens when a gifted writer heeds her masters and also listens to herself. . . . [An] offbeat, engaging and compelling narrative with wry intelligence and a grasp of the darker fears of the imagination.”—Eileen Battersby, The Irish Times
“A short, haunting novel . . . A sensitive portrait of how it feels to scratch the surface of a foreign city.”—Ruth Atkins, Bookseller (Booksellers’ Choice)
“Aridjis’s incandescent prose delivers an atmospheric evocation of Berlin and the ghosts of history that perpetually haunt it.”—Sean P. Carroll, Bookslut.com
“Book of Clouds is a startling and original reflection on a city that resists amnesia: traces of Berlin’s past are everywhere. Aridjis has found them with the instinct of a dream-catcher and the gravitas of an historian. . . . . [A] mesmerizing experience. . . . Aridjis has drawn a small world of tangential and sometimes chaotic meetings. But it’s not random: like the clouds whose patterns reveal the threat of rain or the likelihood of a fine day, Aridjis’ own map of Berlin is both momentary and eternal. Tatiana’s voyage takes us through a city catacombed by its past, yet canopied with great potential—a place where identities may be re-shaped and the self can ease itself into the flow of history.”—Eve Lucas, ExBerliner.com
"Beautifully evocative." —Malcolm Burgess, The Guardian
"A hypnotic first novel . . . [Book of Clouds] has the power of dreams and still hasn't left me."--Junot Diaz, Salon.com (Best Books of 2009, Authors' Picks)
“First novels by young writers who see the world with a fresh, original vision and write about it with clarity and restraint are rare enough to begin with. When you add in the fact that Chloe Aridjis’s Book of Clouds is also a stunningly accurate portrait of Berlin, as well as a thoughtful portrayal of a young Mexican Jew drifting through her life abroad, this novel becomes required reading of the most pleasurable sort. . . . A book that has so much to recommend it, not least its ability to convey both actual and distorted realities at once.”—Wendy Lesser, The New York Times Book Review
“Spiked with a dreamlike urban surrealism. . . . Tatiana is deeply inhabited by her author, who moves calmly from one precinct to another in Tatiana's unusual mind. . . . Magic and poetry are everywhere in Book of Clouds . . . An unsettling atmosphere unlike anything in recent fiction.”—Regina Marler, Los Angeles Times
“Once in a while a book comes along and does what it’s meant to do. It carves out a space for itself in the memory and it settles there, changing the way we see the world. . . . Like Gogol, Chloe Aridjis is interested in caricatures of urbanity, the space between comedy and metaphysical horror, and the confrontation between character and our own atavistic fears. Quiet, brave, and utterly unique, [Book of Clouds] will disturb, satiate, and change the way you think.”—The Times (UK)
“A stirring and lyrical first novel by a young writer of immense talent.”—Paul Auster
“Exquisitely written, Book of Clouds is a perfect Berlin story for our unsettled times, and a remarkable debut.”—Francisco Goldman
“[An] exceptional debut novel . . . Readers who know Berlin will find Aridjis’s re-creation of it almost uncanny, achieved with great clarity of vision—you’re right there, every moment—but also with such economy, using just a few carefully observed details. Those who do not know the city will feel somehow sure they do by the end of the book. . . . Book of Clouds is a beautifully turned piece of writing of extraordinary assurance . . . and as natural as breathing. Both vivid and dreamlike, at once very precise in its images and also enchantingly broad-brush atmospheric, this is a debut more captivating than any I’ve read in some time.”—Daniel Hahn, The Independent
“Chloe Aridjis has achieved something quite astonishing in a first book by a young writer: a rethinking of one of our most complacent forms, the historical novel. . . . The writer [Aridjis] calls to mind is the Modernist Haruki Murakami, with his unsolved riddles and ultra-cool characters.”—Helen Rumbelow, The Times (UK)
“Aridjis is an insightful observer of post-reunification Berlin, its restless nightlife, its transient flea-markets, its shifting landscape of neglect and gentrification, the ghosts of its past – and the chilling rise of the far right. Her lyrical, restrained prose conjures a dream-like atmosphere that borders on magical realism. This haunting debut is a significant and memorable addition to the literature of a troubling city.”—CJ Schüler, The Independent
“Original and nuanced . . . Provocative . . . Like WG Sebald reborn as a young woman, [Tatiana] walks the [Berlin] streets . . . [as] the weight of history presses in. . . . [Book of Clouds is] an entirely refreshing portrait of young womanhood, it is unselfconscious, uncompromising, wholly authentic: a fraying mass of narrative loose ends, it is also somehow satisfying in its open-endedness. . . . A most unusual debut.”—Justine Jordan, The Guardian
“Fresh and original . . . A portrait of Berlin, a city famed for its richness and strangeness, hauntingly captured by Aridjis . . . [who] shares [Murakami’s] sense of dream-like wandering.”—Francesca Segal, The Observer
“Brave . . . Weighty in its intelligence and thoughtfulness. Aridjis pens an odd kind of love letter to Berlin . . . [in a] highly appealing writing style—which is clean and spare, restrained yet direct. . . . [Aridjis] impressively conjures Berlin as an essentially unknowable place in spite of all the history we think we know about it.”—Lesley McDowell, The Scotsman
“An extended pyschogeographical meditation on the tension between boundaries of all kinds and the spaces both within and outside them. . . . Book of Clouds is strongly reminiscent of Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy. . . . It’s so beautifully written and stylistically coherent: a thoughtful and sincere exploration of the ways in which cities encode and embody memory, to be savoured slowly and allowed to linger in the mind.”—F. T. Huffkin, Belletrista
“What a perfectly odd, summation-defying book this is. . . . Nothing can budge the reader once she has turned the first page.”—Beth Kephart Books
“Chloe Aridjis’s Berlin is full of nebulae. Clouds, fog, memory, the past—these atmospheric and historical forces surge up and surround the characters of Aridjis’s beautiful debut novel, Book of Clouds. . . . With episodes of delightful descriptive acuity . . . uncertainty might be Aridjis’s fictional specialty, but she captures it with rare incisiveness.”—Chloe Schama, B&N.com
“The opening is a knockout. . . . Aridjis beautifully captures Tatiana’s conflicting sense of certainty and impossibility . . . in this novel of ideas.”—Kirkus Reviews
“Book of Clouds is a post-Sebaldian, post-Benjamin peripatetic meditation, at once casual and deeply sourced, on post-Wall Berlin. . . . One of my favorites this year.”—Ali Smith, Times Literary Supplement (UK)
“Irresistible . . . Aridjis brings a bit of realism, a bit of wonder, a hint of darkness and true originality to this sharp, lyric and beguilingly strange tale of a life in flux. . . . [The novel] soars and shimmers through its assured writing, whimsical observations and its sheer ease. . . . Book of Clouds is what happens when a gifted writer heeds her masters and also listens to herself. . . . [An] offbeat, engaging and compelling narrative with wry intelligence and a grasp of the darker fears of the imagination.”—Eileen Battersby, The Irish Times
“A short, haunting novel . . . A sensitive portrait of how it feels to scratch the surface of a foreign city.”—Ruth Atkins, Bookseller (Booksellers’ Choice)
“Aridjis’s incandescent prose delivers an atmospheric evocation of Berlin and the ghosts of history that perpetually haunt it.”—Sean P. Carroll, Bookslut.com
“Book of Clouds is a startling and original reflection on a city that resists amnesia: traces of Berlin’s past are everywhere. Aridjis has found them with the instinct of a dream-catcher and the gravitas of an historian. . . . . [A] mesmerizing experience. . . . Aridjis has drawn a small world of tangential and sometimes chaotic meetings. But it’s not random: like the clouds whose patterns reveal the threat of rain or the likelihood of a fine day, Aridjis’ own map of Berlin is both momentary and eternal. Tatiana’s voyage takes us through a city catacombed by its past, yet canopied with great potential—a place where identities may be re-shaped and the self can ease itself into the flow of history.”—Eve Lucas, ExBerliner.com
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Instant Classic,
By
This review is from: Book of Clouds (Paperback)
From the stunning opening chapter when the narrator, Tatiana, first visits the Berlin Wall and returns years later as she recounts disquieting episodic encounters and adventures that reveal the city's grim past, to her final reckoning decision to return home to Mexico, Chloe Aridjis weaves a gripping, multi-layered and complex story. With a photographer's vivid eye for detail and composition and a writer's gift for keen metaphoric observation, she charges the stark realities of Berlin's landscape with digressive glints - fleeting references to Mexico's ancient cultures and lore, and the poet's lament for modernity's destruction of nature - all the while tracing the intensely alert protagonist's interior perceptions and musings from night to day. Darkness and light become diffused through the novel's dreamlike atmospheric prisms. Ms. Aridjis has achieved a contemporary modernist classic.
6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Enthralling Read,
By FM (London, England) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Book of Clouds (Paperback)
Book of Clouds is a novel of remarkable sensitivity, wit, profundity and grace. Chloe Aridjis guides us with poised assurance through the inner landscape of her protagonist, Tatiana, as well as the beguiling strata -- both temporal and spatial -- of Berlin. She writes with intelligence and beauty, limning characters and imagery that linger in the mind. This is an extraordinary and marvelous book, truly the best contemporary novel I have ever read.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
wry, poetic and beguiling,
By Max K. Fischer (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Book of Clouds (Paperback)
I recently came across this debut novel and while reading it was impressed by the fine balance the author strikes between the seriousness of the themes and the playful manner of the prose. Aridjis's sense of humor is wry and understated and at times she conjures up a very particular sense of the Absurd.
The author successfully blurs the line between fact and fiction, creating a female character who appears to share some of her biography but is nonetheless an invention, an unreliable narrator whose vision of reality runs on its own strange and quirky logic.
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Inside This Book
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Doktor Weiss, Jonas Krantz, Deutsche Bank, Herr Tuchy, Landsberger Allee, Dark Skies Association, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Mexico City, East Berlin, Bar Gagarin, Prenzlauer Berg, Brandenburg Gate Browse Sample Pages:
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ghost stations, sleeping mask Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Doktor Weiss, Jonas Krantz, Deutsche Bank, Herr Tuchy, Landsberger Allee, Dark Skies Association, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Mexico City, East Berlin, Bar Gagarin, Prenzlauer Berg, Brandenburg Gate Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | First Pages | Surprise Me!
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