This book explores the visual transformation of the contemporary European city, focusing on the most emblematic and visibly wounded of all European cities - Berlin. Provocatively written as a series of interlocking poetic fragments, the text evokes the formation of metropolitan 'identity' as it ricochets between the physical surface of the city and the vulnerable but manipulating consciousness of city dwellers. Stephen Barber travelled through the cities of Eastern Europe while writing this book between 1990 and 1995. His book represents a reinvention of 'travel writing' and will be of vital interest to students of European history, cinema and media