BOOKS
Peregrine’s Island, Volume 3 of the Berlin Book (Print and E-book)
Peregrine’s Island is the third volume in the four volume series The Berlin Book. This volume follows the career of the German-American writer, John Schade, the main character of volume one Schade’s Passage. He returns to the USA after his tour of duty in Berlin as a cultural affairs officer in the American sector with a pile of notes for a novel about the exile experience of anti-Nazi Germans including his own family. Disappointed with the sales of and lack of royalties from the book, he moves to Key West at the southeastern end of the Florida Keys in 1947 to live cheaply and write a second novel. On the island he meets new friends including Perri who becomes his lover, the photo journalist Francesca, the part time hooker Silver, the blind newsbringer Anselmo, the writer Samuel Mithman (who appears briefly in volumes one & two), and the Jewish German now American sailor Franz Friedmann who becomes a close friend but leaves to join the nascent Israeli navy in the war between the new Jewish state and its Arab neighbors. Matters involving Berlin catch up with Schade throughout the book. In the end, Schade finishes the novel and is once again drawn back to the ruptured former capital of Germany, the narrative of which will be contained in volume four, Ursula’s Triumph. (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2018)
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Schadow’s Meditations, Volume 2 of the Berlin Book (Print and E-book)
This is a parallel volume to Schade’s Passage, not a sequel, though major characters appear in both books. Emil Schadow is a conservative history professor who survives the war after the Nazis ignominiously throw him out of the university. Looking back in his old age he writes about his life and times including his pre-1914 affair with the young, radical sculptor Helga Opladen that ends in bitter tragedy, his guilt about not resisting the Hitler dictatorship and his distanced relationship with his deceased wife and son. His memories of friends and colleagues are presented throughout, as well as commentaries on some of his opinions and actions by John Schade and the often mysterious William Makepeace, characters from Volume 1. The book is complemented by a diary kept by Helga covering her life from her days in the artist milieu of Paris up to her death in the revolutionary year 1919. (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2017)
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Schade’s Passage, A Novel of Berlin 1945-1946 (Print and E-book)
This first of the four-volume Berlin Book follows the young John Schade, whose family the nazis forced out of Germany in the mid-1930s to the US. He returns to Berlin in the summer of 1945 as a cultural affairs control officer in the US Army’s military government to participate in the denazification and reconstruction of Berlin cultural life. He is compelled to reconcile the experience of exile, leftist political leanings, and his precipitous affair with an intensely conflicted German actress with the political and moral necessity of both punishing and rebuilding Germany in cooperation with the other Allies. The second volume, Schadow’s Meditations was also released in 2017, and the third volume, Peregrine’s Island was released in 2018. The fourth, and final volume, is in the works. (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2017)
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NEW The Durrell Log: A Chronology of the Life and Times of Lawrence Durrell, 3rd Edition (Print Only)
A revised, enlarged, updated and reorganized version of A Chronology of the Life and Times of Lawrence Durrell, Homme de Lettres, published in 2007 by The Durrell Library of Corfu. This new edition is divided into sections according to Durrell’s periods of residence in various countries, has running heads for ease of navigation, and a 16-page “Index of Persons”. (Colenso Books, 2019)
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Almost to the End, The Shorter Poems: New and Old (Print and E-book)
These Haiku-like poems and longer verses represent nighttime thoughts and inspirations written down while reading Sam Hamill’s translations in The Sound of Water: Haiku by Basho, Buson, Issa , and Other Poets. Some are simply inspired by them. Others come from the author’s own musings. (The New Atlantian Library, an imprint of Absolutely Amazing E-books, 2016)
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The Hemingway Log, A Chronology of His Life and Times, University Press of Kansas, 2015 (Print and E-book)
“Although some before him have tried to compile a chronology of Hemingway’s life and works, none to my knowledge have come close to attaining Brewster Chamberlin’s achievement in The Hemingway Log…” Paul Hendrickson, author of Hemingway’s Boat: Everything He Loved in Life, and Lost More
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Radovic’s Dilemma: A Mediterranean Thriller (Print and E-book)
Radovic is an aging assassin, and he needs to retire. Exhausted from an arduous assignment in the north, he escapes to Corsica for the warmth of the sea and his lover’s arms….but a mysterious and irresistible blonde intervenes. In his eagerness to escape his dilemma, Radovic takes one last job, despite warnings from a friend. As he travels to the Middle East on a deadly freighter, the job unravels, only to be resolved in a surprising double-twist ending. (Xlibris, Revised Edition, 2012, also available as an E-book.)
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The Time in Tavel: An Informal Illustrated Memoir of a Sojourn in Provence, Revised Second Edition (Print and E-book))
In 1982, Chamberlin and his wife, Lynn-Marie Smith, moved to Provence and spent a bit more than a year in the small village of Tavel (known world-wide for its marvelous rosé wine), 15 kilometers northwest of the fabled City of the Popes, Avignon, on the Rhône River in the heart of Provence. This richly illustrated book tells the story of that time in Tavel where they experienced the quirky characteristics of Provençal village life, met and entertained old and new friends, and learned the exquisite and earthy tastes of the regional cuisine. (The New Atlantian Library, an imprint of Absolutely Amazing E-Books, 2017)
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Travels in Greece and France (Print and E-book)
This first volume in the New Travels and Talks series contains several pieces about the author and his wife and their oddly circuitous travels in Greece and France Also included are lectures given by the author at the Durrell School of Corfu. (The New Atlantian Library, an imprint of Absolutely Amazing E-Books, 2013.
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A Paris Chapbook (Print and E-book)
A series of short texts on the City of Light by various Europeans and Americans — Honoré de Balzac, Charles Baudelaire, Jean Cocteau, Friedrich Nietzsche, Lawrence Durrell, Frederick Douglass, Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway and Henry James, to name a few. These are followed by sharp and acute, sometimes hilarious comments from Chamberlin. (The New Atlantian Library, an imprint of Absolutely Amazing E-Books, 2013)
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Shorts of All Sorts: Selected Prose and Poems (Print and E-book)
A collection of short pieces including one-act plays, film scenarios, an obscene radio script burlesquing a 1950s radio western, poems, short stories that defy classification, and memorials to departed friends. (The New Atlantian Library, an imprint of Absolutely Amazing E-Books, 2013
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Paris Now and Then: Memoirs, Opinions, and a Companion to the City of Light for the Literate Traveler (Print Only)
Though not a traditional guide, this entertaining companion comments on things Parisian (and French and American and German), and presents a collection of anecdotes meant to amuse as well as instruct. Organized by arrondissement, a series of mini-essays are interspersed throughout, such as “Henry James in Paris” (1st arrondissement), Goldenberg’s deli (4th) and the Germans in Paris (7th), plus comments on public hygiene, dogs in restaurants, André Gide’s opinion of Victor Hugo and the latter’s place in French literary history related to his Parisian residences, Ernest Hemingway’s place in 20th century Paris, Florence Gould’s behavior during the Nazi occupation, an appreciation of Natalie Clifford Barney, who lived for 50 years in Paris, and more. (The Vineyard Press, Revised Edition, 2004)
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A Piece of Paris – The Grand XIVth (Print Only)
The 14th arrondissement of Paris, of which Montparnasse is the heart, is positively pervaded with the history of late 19th and 20th century art and literature. The book contains not only descriptions of the famous such as Matisse, Picasso, Josephine Baker, James Joyce, Hemingway and André Gide, but also informs the reader about the Germans in the Café du Dome before 1914, the now forgotten American women of color who carved profoundly moving sculptures in the art schools and their studios, and much more. This volume is an early version of the chapter about the 14th in Paris Now and Then, and is beautifully illustrated with drawings by the late Gregory Masurovsky and photographs by Philippe Simon. (Masurovsky Publishing Company, 1996)
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Mediterranean Sketches (Print Only)
This volume of short pieces contains fiction, essays on various subjects (including the real salade niçoise, Provençal pizza, the Durrell School of Corfu, the blessing of the sea at Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer), travelogues, letters, and poems, all of which have some relationship with the lands and waters around the Mediterranean Sea. Many take place in Provence, and several are set in Greece (the nostalgic “Fidel’s Man in Portaria” and the futuristic “The New Monument: A Greek Village Fable”) and Egypt. (The Vineyard Press, 2005)
Situation Reports on the Emotional Equipoise: Collected Poems 1959-2006 (Print Only)
Chamberlin began writing poems in the mid-1950s and has never really stopped. The themes of the poems reflect a wide variety of subjects from the eternal (love, sadness) to the contemporary (the deaths of W.H. Auden and Samuel Beckett) written in a range of styles and vocabularies. (Xlibris, 2007)
