It was a beautiful dream; as compelling and just as any in history – yet unattainable. Realizing it meant overcoming entrenched ideological and political divisions that had split Berlin and the world for half a century. Then it happened; overnight and without warning. And nothing would ever be as it was before.
Michael Califra lived and worked in Germany, mostly in Berlin, from 1986 to 1998 where he wrote the novel, No Man's Land.
When he first considered writing about the city it was still divided. The challenge then was to render in fiction a situation more absurdly fictional than any he could imagine. Only after the fall of the Berlin Wall and reunification did it become clear that the division was only part of a story in which imaginable joy could turn to unbearable pain on a journey from the age of ideology to the End of History.