Sci-Fi, Dystopian

A knetic debut novel following three siblings—young, Jewish, and downwardly-mobile—from 2001 to 2034, as they each come of age and escape their affluent gated community in Buenos Aires, their stories spanning Europe and Israel, even Japan, as they search for one another again. Berlin Atomized begins in Buenos Aires of the early 2000s with the self-baptisms of Nina Goldstein. She bathes too frequently, washing with fervor and I am not asleep. She grows up amid the partying and undeserved siestas, the paper maché revolutions of youth, while her brother Jeremías is drawn into the city's powder keg music scene, and the eldest, Mateo, simply lights things on fire. Each sibling rehearses their escape from affluent Nordelta, the capitalist Eden of their birth, unaware that the gated community will soon be underwater, the family in pieces. From Punta del Este to Paris, Berlin, Jerusalem, and Brussels to Tokyo, the novel progresses into a dire near future of constant flight, fire, and the siblings’ search for one another.

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