CAFÉ BERLIN

First published in 1992, and now in development as a movie by Wolfgang Petersen (The Perfect Storm, etc.), Nebenzal’s debut returns to the scene of his screenplay adaptation for the movie Cabaret—prewar Berlin in all its decadent splendor. Affirming the story’s political and military accuracy in a headnote, Nebenzal depicts café society with, as Kirkus noted, “headspinning authenticity.” The story of a Sephardic Jew masquerading as a Spanish club owner, it covers a wide range of society in cosmopolitan Berlin. Kirkus praised Nebenzal’s “Nabokovian, termite-like detail” on all the areas of life it enters, even as war takes hold. In short: “after a strong start, it gets only better.”