Thorsten Nagelschmidt
Night crawlers

The international arty set has long felt at home in the rough but commodious party city of Berlin. But what about those who work behind the scenes at night? Thorsten Nagelschmidt depicts this in his new novel.

By Holger Moos

© S. Fischer Taxi drivers, paramedics, bicycle couriers, deposit collectors, drug dealers, bouncers, late night shopkeepers – they are the heroes in Nagelschmidt’s fourth novel Arbeit (Work). The title already says what it’s about: work – not superficial pleasures. The novel describes these characters’ experiences in the course of one night.

Self-involved

In twenty chapters, Nagelschmidt introduces his eleven main characters to us. Almost none of them enjoy their jobs and at best make a virtue of necessity – most of the time they don’t even succeed at that. Sometimes their paths cross, but basically they’re all lone warriors who don’t have the money or the time to think much about others. Bookseller Ingrid, who spends her night collecting bottles, “likes the night. At night everyone is so self-involved, so focused on getting high, on getting laid, on self-fulfilment that they don’t notice one more person at the periphery. They all want to be in the spotlight, on stage, at the centre.”
 
The book is not a novel that celebrates Berlin for its diversity, hipness, and subculture. The 43-year-old author sees his own works as “socially realistic literature in the broadest sense,” as Nagelschmidt said in a ZEIT interview.

twenty-first century Berlin novel

According to Patrick Bauer from SZ, Arbeit is “the first great twenty-first century Berlin novel … No matter what remains of Berlin’s hedonism of the past decade, now that the 2020s are at risk of becoming an era of distancing, Thorsten Nagelschmidt ensures that something of these nights will last forever.”
 
Nagelschmidt’s skill at confidently and credibly presenting the very diverse milieus is particularly impressive. By choosing to tell the story from multiple perspectives, he creates a multi-layered panorama of Berlin’s nightlife. Narratively speaking, the episodic novel is also successful. The constant change of perspective and the many cliffhangers get the reader caught up in a maelstrom so they can’t put the book down. Of course, it would be interesting to find out what these characters are doing now that the party has come to a standstill due to the virus. But that would probably be a very different novel: Guarding the doors of a supermarket is very different from guarding the doors of a trendy club.