New York, N.Y. Black Cat [a paperback original imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.], 2009. Uncorrected Proof. Trade paperback. [8], 209, [5] pages. This is a stirring and lyrical first novel by a young writer of immense talent. Verso states "Not for Resale". 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 any of her neighbors. When she takes a job transcribing notes for the reclusive historian Doktor Weiss, her life in Berlin becomes more complex--and more perilous. Unfolding with the strange, charged logic of of a dream, this book 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. From a crowded U-Bahn where Hitler appears dressed as an old woman, to an underground Gestapo bowling alley whose walls bear score marks of games long settled, Chloe Aridjis guides us through Berlin with wit and compassion, showing why cities, like people, cannot outrun their pasts. Chloe Aridjis is a Mexican- American novelist and writer. Her novel Book of Clouds (2009) was published in eight countries, and won the Prix du Premier Roman Étranger. Her second novel, Asunder (2013) published to unanimous acclaim. Her third novel, Sea Monsters (2019), was awarded the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 2020. She is the daughter of Mexican poet and diplomat Homero Aridjis and American Betty de Aridjis, an environmental activist and translator. She has a doctorate in nineteenth-century French poetry from the University of Oxford. More