'As long as he had money, he remained decent. But then he ran out of money'

Franz Biberkopf is back on the streets of Berlin. Determined to go straight after a stint in prison for doing some stupid stuff, he finds himself thwarted by an external agency that looks an awful lot like fate. Cheated, humiliated, thrown from a moving car; embroiled in an underworld of pimps, thugs, drunks and prostitutes, Franz picks himself up over and over again - until one day he is struck a blow which might just prove his downfall.

A dazzling, freewheeling collage of newspaper reports, Biblical stories, drinking songs and urban slang, Berlin Alexanderplatz is the great novel of Berlin life.