In this bestselling book Russian immigrant Kaminer describes life in Berlin since the Wall came down in a series of short, wonderfully understated and comic vignettes. The sheer lunacy of some of it shows that, as in the Canterbury Tales, "all life is here". There is the German who learns Russian from a children's radio show and calls everybody "my little friend" and gets arrested for murder when he visits Moscow for the first time, the young woman who says she has a mouse in her head after being experimented on by mysterious scientists, advice on how to deal with curses and hire a witch (you need plenty of money), why Berlin is the singles capital of the world (but has no flies) and of course the eponymous Russian disco that the author runs himself.

This is the sort of book that it is nice to dip into when you need a smile from somewhere, and it will probably make you want to go to Berlin. If Dickens was around now he would certainly head off there and write at least one novel if it is anything like this and Kaminer has the knack of telling it like it is in laconic, self-mocking, minimalist bites. I hope he writes something else.