Maaza Mengiste is one of the most important writers working today. Her novel The Shadow King — shortlisted for the Booker Prize, winner of the LA Times Book Prize, and named book of the year by the New York Times, NPR, Time, and others — confirmed her as a writer of rare power and precision. Her debut, Beneath the Lion’s Gaze, remains a landmark of contemporary African fiction. Across novels, essays, and photography, her work returns again and again to history’s buried truths: who is remembered, who is erased, and what it costs to look clearly at both.

Maaza is currently a fellow at the American Academy where she is working on her third novel, A Brief Portrait of Small Deaths, set in the city during the interwar period, centred on a Black German woman navigating art, politics, and survival as the Nazis consolidate power. It is a book rooted in this city’s own history, and there is no better place to begin that conversation than here.

Tickets here

Our Romantic & Ruinous book club is alive and flourishing into May! These monthly meetings continue as a space to read closely, think together, and return to books that hold complexity around love, identity, and desire. These are conversations that move between the personal and the political, the intimate and the structural.

This month‘s book: You Exist Too Much by Zaina Arafat

A novel of queer longing, displacement, and the relentless search for self. Told in sharp, shifting vignettes between the US and the Middle East, the novel follows a young woman coming into adulthood whose desires are shaped as much by repression as by hunger.

In a world that has long expected women to follow a single prescribed path, Nicole’s book offers something rare: serious, tender, and unflinching company. Drawing on her own journey and the voices of women she found across the world, she builds a portrait of lives lived outside the maternal script — and in doing so, creates the community she was looking for. This is a book that finds its readers and brings them together.

This evening is a particularly special one for Chapters. Sharmaine edited and published Others Like Me at Dialogue Books, making this a genuine homecoming — the book returning to the hands that first believed in it, in conversation with the author who wrote it. There are not many evenings quite like this one.

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On 30 April, we welcome Sophie Robinson to Chapters to celebrate Oyster Prairie, a novel of queer longing, artistic fixation, and the dangerous pull of becoming someone else.

At its centre is a woman on the edge of herself, her work, and her life, drawn into an intense relationship with an older female filmmaker she both desires and mythologises. What follows is a story of obsession, projection, and the fragile line between admiration and erasure.

In conversation with Sharmaine Lovegrove, the evening will explore queer desire without sentimentality, ambition and self-destruction, and the creative lives women build and break in pursuit of something bigger

Expect a reading, a conversation, and space to stay a while after.

Tickets Here

We’re delighted to welcome Nani Jansen Reventlow to Chapters for an evening of conversation around her book Radical Justice.

Nani is a human rights lawyer and the founder of Systemic Justice, a law firm for movements working to put the power of strategic litigation in the hands of marginalised communities.

Radical Justice explores how change happens, and who gets to shape it. Moving between personal stories, global case studies, and wider questions of power, it asks what it means to understand the root causes of injustice, and how each of us might play a role in addressing them.

In conversation with Sharmaine Lovegrove, the evening will explore questions of voice, power, and responsibility. Who is heard. Who is represented. And how change is built, collectively and over time.

Tickets Here

Tarot Reading With Lunar Tarot

We’re introducing Tarot Tuesday at Chapters, an evening of tarot and books led by Lunar Tarot. A natural extension of what we’ve always believed the shop to be, a place to come curious and leave with a discovery.

Lunar Tarot offers a contemporary and considered approach to tarot, grounded in attention, clarity, and what sits just beneath the surface. Throughout the evening, there will be one-to-one readings, quiet, focused, and precise.

Around them, the bookshop responds in its own way. Tables drawn from across the shelves, thinking about intuition, change, and the stories we turn to when we are trying to understand where we are, and where we might be going.

Readings:

Single card reading — €5

Three card reading — €10

Tickets Here

Our Romantic & Ruinous book club continues as a space to read closely, think together, and return to books that hold complexity around love, desire, and identity. These are conversations that move between the personal and the political, the intimate and the structural.

This month’s book: Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin

A timeless, piercing exploration of love, identity, and the cost of self-denial. Baldwin’s novel remains as urgent and affecting now as when it was first published, asking difficult questions about who we allow ourselves to be, and at what cost.

This session is now fully booked.

Julia Franck in conversation with translator Imogen Taylor

We are delighted to welcome Julia Franck to Chapters for a special evening of conversation.

Julia Franck is one of Germany’s most acclaimed contemporary novelists, known for her psychologically sharp and historically resonant writing. Her latest book, Worlds Apart, newly translated into English by Imogen Taylor, offers a deeply personal exploration of memory, identity, and the experience of growing up between worlds.

Drawing on Franck’s early diaries and formative years, the book traces the emergence of a literary voice shaped by family history, displacement, and the complexities of life in a divided Germany.

Franck will be joined by translator Imogen Taylor, whose work brings this intimate and layered text to English-language readers. Together, they will discuss the book, the relationship between lived experience and fiction, and the art of translation.

€10 tickets on Eventbrite

This March, we’re pleased to welcome Späti Stories into the shop.

Known for their monthly newsletter exploring Berlin through conversations, perspectives, and the city’s distinctive cultural fabric, Späti Stories creates space for reflection on the people and ideas that shape life here. Their work resonates deeply with what we value at Chapters: curiosity, exchange, and community.

Together, we’re hosting a relaxed evening built around one simple idea — sharing books that have meant something to us.

Because a book swap is never only about the story itself. It is also about the life a book has already lived: the notes in the margins, the underlined passages, the quiet traces of another reader.

How it works

•⁠  ⁠Bring one book that is meaningful to you

•⁠  ⁠Upon arrival, write a short dedication to its future reader

•⁠  ⁠All books will be placed together

•⁠  ⁠Each participant chooses one book to take home

To participate

•⁠ ⁠Please reserve a ticket here

•⁠ ⁠Bringing a book is essential

•⁠ Kindly bring a book you genuinely wish to share

This is a true exchange. Once you select a book, it becomes yours to keep.

After the swap, you’re welcome to stay — to talk, meet fellow readers, or perhaps connect with the person whose book you chose.

Our quieter reading sessions continue to offer a gentle pause in the week. A space to read, reflect, and simply spend time with a book.

In the spirit of International Women’s Day, this gathering offers a small invitation: spend the evening with a book written by a woman or another gender-marginalised (FLINTA) writer.

Across our shelves you’ll find novels, essays, poetry, and memoir — new voices and established ones, recent releases and books that have long shaped the canon.

A quiet way of making space. Of recognising the breadth of voices that shape literature.

Choose something that shifts your thinking, steadies you, or simply keeps you company. As always, there is no expectation to speak. Just time to read, reflect, and share the room.

To RSVP please email bookshop@chaptersberlin.com

Our book club continues to become one of the most animated corners of Chapters: engaged, curious, and never short on opinion.

As a core part of the Chapters team and our resident romance expert, Saleema brings both deep genre knowledge and a keen instinct for the unexpected.

On 9th March, we will be discussing Son of the Morning by Akwaeke Emezi. A bold, sensual paranormal romance where desire, power, and the supernatural collide.

RSVP via bookshop@chaptersberlin.com

Join us at Chapters Bookshop, Berlin to celebrate the paperback release of A Beautiful Lack of Consequence by Monika Radojevic

Join us at Chapters for a quiet and compelling evening of story and conversation as we celebrate the paperback release of A Beautiful Lack of Consequence, Monika Radojevic’s vivid and finely tuned collection of short stories. Her work moves with wit, sharpness and emotional depth as it traces the small pressures and sudden breaks that shape our lives.

In conversation with Sharmaine Lovegrove, Monika will speak about how these stories come together, how she approaches voice and structure, and how fiction can illuminate what sits just beneath the surface. Together they will explore the moments that change us, the humour that carries us and the clarity that arrives when we least expect it.

€5 - sign up with EventBrite

Romantic & Ruinous is a book club for readers who like their love stories complex, unsettling, and deeply felt. We move between contemporary novels and classics that reward close reading, spirited discussion, and the occasional disagreement. Expect beauty, discomfort, sharp insights, and the possibility of heartbreak.

This is a space for lively, thoughtful conversation shaped by the group, the text, and the questions each book opens up.

First read: A Love Letter to Whiskey by Kandi Steiner.

A raw, obsessive love story about desire, timing, and the particular heartbreak of wanting someone who may never fully choose you.

To join, email bookshop@chaptersberlin.com

Chill & Chapters is an invitation to read together, quietly and without agenda. You arrive with a book, find a place, and read. There is no discussion to prepare for and no expectation to contribute. It is time set aside for reading itself, held gently by the presence of others doing the same.

rsvp bookshop@chaptersberlin.com