Julia Kornberg’s Berlin Atomized is a lucid and incredibly intriguing novel. It is both a coming-of-age journey, fueled by the restless rage of adolescence, and an odyssey into a starkly realistic vision of a world on the verge of collapse.
The story follows Nina, a fourteen-year-old girl who bathes multiple times a day — as if trying to wash away the weight of her upper-class life. She lives in Nordelta, a gated community on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, with a distant mother, an absent father, and two brothers — Jeremías and Mateo — each seeking their own way to escape the neighborhood’s suffocating air. Jeremías dives into the city’s underground music scene. Mateo gets lost and joins the Israeli Defense Forces. Nina, initially trapped in her rituals of silent baths and haunting mantra — “I’m not asleep” — eventually lets go. Her lethargy evolves into an unsettling desire to leave. She will tear her world apart and burn it down, little by little, just like her brothers.
Set across Buenos Aires — where Julia Kornberg grew up — and Uruguay, Israel, Paris, and Berlin, the novel unfolds through episodes that alternate between Nina and Jeremías’ perspectives, spanning from the early 2000s to 2035. The narrative moves fast, the years flying by as the world as we know it begins to disintegrate; the internal wars the siblings battle within themselves spill out onto the streets. Politics, culture, and media spiral before our eyes into a black hole of violence that feels disturbingly plausible.
From its first pages, the book immerses readers in a labyrinthine, razor-sharp prose. “History repeats itself. First as a tragedy, and then as a tragedy, and then as a tragedy, and then again,” writes Kornberg. Existential and sadly prophetic, Berlin Atomized offers a glimpse of the looming collapse we face and the persistence of the human desire to feel alive despite it.
This year, the book was translated into English. Having previously read it in its original Spanish, I was intrigued to learn from Kornberg herself — with whom I shared some warm Argentinian dinners and conversations in New York — that it underwent significant editing during the translation process, done alongside Jack Rockwell. The result is remarkable. As Kornberg notes, “Some things can’t be translated.” And so what is untranslatable remains so — untouched. Argentine slang, jokes, and expressions are seamlessly woven into the English text, adding a unique urban texture and authenticity to this already culturally layered piece.
With a biting voice, Kornberg crafts an all-encompassing narrative that transcends the boundaries of the traditional novel. By the end, one feels the need to return to the beginning, as though to confirm it is the same book that has unfolded all along. In Nina’s words, this story is a contemporary tale of Babel — a bold, multilingual, entangled exploration of the conflicted human condition. Berlin Atomized is a modern, fascinating dystopia; a meditation on the fractured realities of our time and those that may lie ahead.
Jessica Ruetter is a writer and the founder of Bibliofilia, an online platform dedicated to Spanish-language literature. Through interviews with Latin American authors and book recommendations, she connects readers across the Hispanic world. She recently graduated from Universidad Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
