Order Prevails in Berlin is a short essay taken from the final section of Vincenzo Latronico's book La Chiave di Berlino (The Berlin Key). The essay has been translated by Sophie Hughes.
Vincenzo is most famously known for the booker prize shortlisted novel Perfection which follows the lives of a two millennium 'digital nomads' living in Berlin - a striking satire about the emptiness of contemporary existence
Previously available only in Italian this fantastic 11,000 word essay gives the autobiographical context in which Vincenzo came to write his acclaimed novel, as he contemplates the changing landscape of Berlin between 2009 and 2023.
In an excerpt from the essay, Vincenzo begins to reflect on his time in the city:
"Writing about Berlin (the setting for my novel Perfection, which I’d just published in Italian) led me to write about what it had felt like when I first moved there a dozen years earlier, which in turn led me to wonder: why? I found no particularly compelling answer, or rather no answer that didn’t boil down to “I was young”. This is what middle-aged men say when they start asking themselves questions about their twenties.
We also like to complain. The world of our formative years invariably tends to have been more adventurous, exciting and free. This is undoubtedly true of Berlin: in 2009, as opposed to 2023, apartments were cheap, the line at Berghain was short, the wind ruffled barley, etc. Of course, the fact that our grievance is also a generational cliché doesn’t make it any less valid. This seeming contradiction plagues much of the discourse around gentrification, which ended up being the overarching topic of The Berlin Key. Or rather, its invisible villain. It’s also the topic of this particular essay."
Order Prevails in Berlin is exclusively available from the Architecture Foundation shop.
