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A dramatization by Simon Scardifield from Michael Hofmann's landmark translation of Alfred Döblin's modernist masterpiece - a novel that exploded into 1929 and changed urban writing forever.

Ex-convict, Franz Biberkopf, is back on the streets of Berlin determined to go straight. But Berlin has other ideas.

Narrator ..... Claes Bang
Franz ..... Lee Ross
Mack ..... Samuel James
Otto ..... Neil McCaul
Pretzel Woman ..... Ria Marshall
Lina ..... Jasmine Hyde
Conductor ….. Mark Edel Hunt
Eliser ..... Justice Ritchie
Minna ..... Grace Cooper Milton
Speaker ..... Chris Jack
Alice ..... Christine Kavanagh

Produced by Emma Harding and Marc Beeby
Directed by David Hunter and Gemma Jenkins

Published in 1929, Germany is on the brink of fatal change. Döblin throws everything at us, like a radio tuner going up and down the dial: weather reports, historical trivia, adverts, sporting results, this is a world where buildings come alive and beer and Schnapps conduct conversations with us. Berlin itself is as much a character as Biberkopf, it’s like a vast pinball machine through which our protagonist ricochets. We're looking down on the city through God's eyes one moment and feeling the grittiness and grime of Franz's reality the next.

Germans still consider Berlin Alexanderplatz one of their most important - and most loved - literary works. This is Germany's Ulysses playful in its form and as alluring as the modern city it both invents and immortalizes.