Tanya Dalziell

‘In his 1930s memoir Berlin Childhood around 1900, the philosopher Water Benjamin writes from exile of Berlin on the cusp of modernity. Among the images governing Berlin Childhood are snowflakes. The flurries Benjamin compares to the play of words on the page, his apprehension of snowflakes and stories (and allegory itself), while not describing the narrative of Gail Jones’ A Guide to Berlin, can be pressed to illuminate the book’s figurative gesture: something new and unremittingly dense breaking through the familiar.’