MSL June 2012: Out of Africa

Interview in the Financial Times

Please click here to read an interview with me about my novel, the radio series and life in Berlin in the Financial Times.

Vogue Letter from Berlin

Please click here to read a lovely piece about Berlin twenty years after the fall of the Wall that mentions the novel and also my radio series for NPR, Berlin Stories.

TMBTP out in paperback!

from Paperback Row in The New York Times Sunday Book Review:
"THIS MUST BE THE PLACE, by Anna Winger (Riverhead, $16.) A woman (a young teacher with a personal tragedy who has followed her workaholic husband to Berlin), a man (her neighbor, a washed-up German actor) and Berlin itself (which “moved forward with a lack of vanity that she found relaxing”) are the main characters in this smart first novel."

Mother Knows Best

Click here to read a funny article I wrote for the Times Magazine Style section this weekend about recycling...

New York Times Book Review

"Stealthily original...In This Must Be the Place, Winger avoids the braggadocio of typical expatriate fiction, telling a story rooted in universal human emotions - love, loneliness, grief, fear of change and, yes, hope - among people whose identity is more complicated than their citizenship."

It is a rare and wonderful experience to be understood. To read the rest of this fantastic review, please click here.

The gorgeous illustration of Sally Bowles hugging the Berlin Bear that accompanied the review is by Monika Aichele.

Review in The Forward

The Jewish Daily Forward says "It’s a pleasure to read a story about finding oneself again not though romance but through friendship."

To read the rest of this lovely review, please click here.

Maxim Biller on TMBTP

Please click here to read a very nice piece by Maxim Biller in Die Zeit (in German)...

Book Club Questions for TMBTP

Please click here to see Penguin's reading guide about the book, a list of questions for discussion!

COMING SOON to a radio near you!

Berlin Stories for NPR Worldwide
www.berlinstories.org


















(Our fabulous logo designed by Christoph Niemann)

Eat, Memory

An article I wrote for the Times Magazine in 2006, about celebrating passover in Berlin, has been anthologized in a new book called Eat, Memory: Great Writers at the Table. Many of my favorite writers, like Ann Patchett, Heidi Julavits and Tom Perotta, are also included in the collection. I am quite thrilled. In stores this week!

The Brownie Battle

Please click here to read an article I wrote for the New York Times Magazine this week. Photo by Reinhard Hunger.

What is good dubbing?

Please click here to watch the new ad for the ONE Campaign.

Jewish Week

Please click here to read an interview with me about Berlin and the Jewish themes explored in This Must Be the Place.

(At left is a drawing I love by the artist Stephanie Snider. It could be an illustration of my novel!)

The New York Times Book Review

"Stealthily original...In This Must Be the Place, Winger avoids the braggadocio of typical expatriate fiction, telling a story rooted in universal human emotions - love, loneliness, grief, fear of change and, yes, hope - among people whose identity is more complicated than their citizenship."

It is a rare and wonderful experience to be understood. To read the rest of this fantastic review, please click here.

The gorgeous illustration of Sally Bowles hugging the Berlin Bear that accompanied the review is by Monika Aichele.

Review in The New York Sun

"This Must Be the Place is a smart, tasteful novel...Ms. Winger's ...German characters look back not to the recent years of change, or to the difficult years after World War II, but to the '80s, when West Berlin's cultural orientation was more pro-American than it is now. Walter's favorite meeting restaurant is called the Wild West. In the world of the novel, Walter is a kind of "good German" because he is an American German. His mother was American, and he spent a year in California, where he played Prince Charming at Disneyland. His friend Orson, an ambitious German director, needles Hope when she mentions the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Like a true Berliner, he is sensitive to the uses and abuses of suffering as "social capital." But Walter, Tom Cruise's voice in Germany, defends her. This Must Be the Place is at heart a sophisticated romantic comedy, but geopolitics are never far away."

Please click on the post title to read the whole review.

August Reading Dates!

CAMBRIDGE on August 19:
Porter Square Books, 25 White Street, 7pm

SAN FRANCISCO on August 21:
The Booksmith, 1644 Haight Street at 7:30pm

LOS ANGELES on August 22:
Book Soup, 8818 Sunset Blvd. at 7pm

NEW YORK on August 25:
Housing Works Bookstore
126 Crosby Street in SoHo at 7pm

Review in Vogue

"Hope, the melancholy protagonist of Anna Winger's This Must Be The
Place, follows her estranged husband to Berlin shortly after 9/11. Finding herself marooned in their palatial apartment...she struggles to gain a toehold in the unfamiliar, rapidly transforming city. Then she befriends her neighbor, a once-famous soap actor who has made a second career in dubbing as the German voice of Tom Cruise but is still searching for his own role in life. Crossing paths in the building's elevator (a hilarious scene in which REO Speedwagon figures prominently), they join forces to plumb the building's secret history--and their own covert pasts. With a wryly engaging voice, Winger deftly reveals the rough-edged layers that make up places--and people."

Passover in Berlin

An article I wrote for the New York Times Magazine about celebrating Passover in Berlin will be included a book of food essays edited by Amanda Hesser called Eat, Memory. It will be published by Norton in November 2008.

Please click on the post title above to read it.

Review in Publisher's Weekly

"In Winger's touching and emotionally turbulent debut, the fantasy of new beginnings gives way to a persistent sense of haunted—but oddly comforting—history. Set in Berlin in the late fall of 2001, the novel focuses on the overlapping stories of grieving American expat Hope and has-been minor German celebrity Walter, who's dreaming of a new career in Hollywood. The real drama arises between the cities of New York and Berlin; both cities, like Hope and Walter, bear a profound survivor's guilt: the war, the wall and the towers overwhelm individual sorrows...but the elegant ending and confident storytelling are redeeming."