City of Exiles

"I like to walk around. When I first got here, I just walked and walked, not thinking about anything, just talking to myself." Iggy Pop, Berlin, 1977Berlin: no man’s land, frontier, a city adrift in the sands of Central Europe. Destroyed, divided and held captive during a century of chaos and upheaval, borderless Berlin has yet remained a city where drifters, dreamers and outsiders can find a place—and finally run free. In City of Exiles, Stuart Braun evokes the restless spirits that have come and gone from Berlin across the last century, the itinerants who are the source of the Berliner Luft, the special free air that infuses this beguiling metropolis." ... an uncompromising attempt to capture the spirit of the place, the city emerging like a constantly evolving Berliner cabaret that makes you want to go there and see for yourself." The Age"Stuart Braun has produced a powerful piece of work which tells us things most of us did not know about Berlin and its shifting population of exiles. More than that, however, he raises important questions concerning the influence of place on the human psyche and the nature of belonging." Minor Literature[s]​“Essential reading ... Everybody’s in here, from the Expressionists of the 1920s to the Geniale Dilletanten of the 1980s, Rosa-Luxemburg’s pre-WWI Spartacists and the RAF to the American transvestites of the 1970s and the gang of digital exiles allied with Edward Snowden ...” ExberlinerABOUT THE AUTHORBorn in Sydney, Stuart Braun completed a doctorate in history before living across Asia, Australia and Europe and publishing widely as a journalist and writer. He has lived in Berlin since 2009. City of Exiles is his first book.