I moved to Berlin in 2007 and, needing work, spent my first few months in the city painting the guest rooms of a newly built hotel. The place in question was only a 10-minute walk from my apartment at Savignyplatz, and the job was strictly Schwarzarbeit: cash-in-hand at the end of every shift. When I knocked off, I would eat a late lunch at a Croatian restaurant nearby, and then catch a film at the Babylon or the Arsenal-kino. Later, as the seasons changed and the days grew warmer, I either lay reading in the Tiergarten or, if the weather was especially fine, would take the S-bahn to Nikolassee and go swimming in the green, still waters of the Große Wannsee.

That year-or-so of reading was an education for me. Irmgard Keun, Wolfgang Köppen, Anna Seghers, Ingeborg Bachmann, Wolfgang Hilbig… a whole world of letters opened up, one that sustains me to this day. But my...