BOOKS
Ursula's Triumph: The End of the Beginning (The Berlin Book)
The Berlin Book series is a portrait of a city devastated and demoralized by the second world war. The effect of war and defeat on the Berliners themselves – artists, journalists, and philosophers – and on the Russian and American occupiers, creates a grey landscape of both the city and the lives lived within it. In this fourth and final volume, Chamberlin’s magisterial knowledge of the city’s history and cultural life introduces the emphasis on essential creativity and the vitality of color to signal the rebirth of the city and at least the vestiges of hope. The exchanges between the American and Russian propaganda personnel, and their admission of the mutual futility of their missions, are humorously and mercilessly underlined by the discussions among the artistic community of their way forward into a world not entirely devoid of love and meaning. Ursula’s Triumph was edited and completed by Richard Pine, writer and founder of the Durrell Library of Corfu after Chamberlin’s death in 2020. (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2024)
Peregrine’s Island, Volume 3 of the Berlin 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)
Schadow’s Meditations, Volume 2 of the Berlin 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)
Schade’s Passage, A Novel of Berlin 1945-1946
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)
The Hemingway Log, A Chronology of His Life and Times, University Press of Kansas, 2015
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
Almost to the End, The Shorter Poems: New and Old
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)
Radovic’s Dilemma: A Mediterranean Thriller
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.
The Time in Tavel: An Informal Illustrated Memoir of a Sojourn in Provence, Revised Second Edition
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.
Travels in Greece and France
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.
A Paris Chapbook
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.
Shorts of All Sorts: Selected Prose and Poems
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.
Paris Now and Then: Memoirs, Opinions, and a Companion to the City of Light for the Literate Traveler
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.
A Piece of Paris – The Grand XIVth
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.
Mediterranean Sketches
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
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)
NEW The Durrell Log: A Chronology of the Life and Times of Lawrence Durrell, 3rd Edition
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)