Wladimir Kaminer: Russian Disco

Abstract

I love Berlin. It is a city of constant surprises, though not all of them are necessarily pleasant. For instance, you can walk out of the luxurious KaDeWe department store in Schoeneberg and within seconds be confronted by a window display for an S&M fetish shop. But if you bear in mind you are in the same streets where Christopher Isherwood created Sally Bowles and the world of Cabaret you'll just grin and say "that's Berlin". This is the city celebrated by Wladimir Kaminer in 'Russian Disco', a collection of wry short narratives. They are not necessarily stories; we are meant to embrace them as true accounts. The English edition of his book gives no indication of the origins of the pithy, succinct observations contained within its covers. All we learn of the origins of the book is that Kaminer was born in 1967 in Moscow and emigrated to Berlin in 1990, where he still lives and writes in German. He has since written a number of books including Military Music and My Caucasian Mother-in-Law. As it happened Kaminer arrived in the East Berlin of the German Democratic Republic and within months found himself living in a Berlin without the Wall. This profound change in his circumstances underlies much of what he writes about here.