Tomorrow, Berlin

Description

Berlin. A city where nightclubs stay open from Friday night till Monday morning. A city with an underbelly as dark and addictive as the 24-hour drugs, drinking, dancing and sex in filthy toilets that it serves up. Three young men, from different backgrounds, meet here by chance, struggling to find a future and to escape from the past. Tobias was violated as a child and tossed from one city to another by separated parents. Now he's got AIDS and can find only fleeting happiness with a new lover. Armand fled from his middle-class family home to live as a painter and set up house with a high-school sweetheart. Tugged between expectations, desire and responsibilities, he flees to give release his artistic soul. But at what cost? Franz was raised in a good, wealthy German family and believed he was capable of achieving anything he wanted. A job in a nightclub leads him into the Berlin underworld, where his life takes an unexpected turn and he is threatened with ruin. Berlin promises both escape and salvation for these three young men, in a stunning coming-of-age story by award-winning author Oscar Coop-Phane. With grace and affection, he depicts a cast of flawed characters whose lives spiral downwards, their lifestyles drawing them into a grimy abyss that threatens to eclipse them. A literary masterpiece, Tomorrow, Berlin is a compelling ode to youth and desire, and a stark reminder that escape can only ever be an illusion.

Oscar Coop-Phane was born in 1988. He left home at 16 with dreams of becoming a painter and at 20 moved to Berlin where he spent a year writing and reading classics. There he wrote Zenith Hotel and Tomorrow, Berlin. He now lives in Brussels.

'Oscar Coop-Phane is, once again, the literary sensation of the year' * Le Figaro * 'Oscar Coop-Phane has managed a rare feat: a beautiful novel, written in classic, stunning prose. It s extraordinary that such a young writer could achieve such mastery of style, with such an exceptional understanding of the human soul' * Elle * 'The subject matter drink, drugs and toilet sex runs the risk of being indigestible and more in keeping with the Bret Easton Ellis set. But Coop-Phane, a disciple of Bove and Callet, employs ageless literary prose and a stylish humanity that I call grace. Berlin tomorrow, certainly. But today? Oscar Coop-Phane' * Le Point *