First of all I have to admit that I’m not a great book-lover, I don’t read a lot and this is a pity as I know I could improve my knowledge, my vocabulary, my ability in speaking and my fantasy too, but unfortunately I can’t find lot of free time to dedicate to books. Or, when I find it, I get tired soon and I can’t stay concentrate for a long time. Sometimes I re-discover the pleasure of reading especially when I find a book –or an article- that captures me.
This has been the case of Christiane F.- Wir kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo, an extraordinary book I read twice (never happened before) that I can consider my favourite book at all. Christiane is a girl who lived the crazy Seventies in Berlin; in this autobiographic book she tells her unregulated life from the difficulties of the childhood to the age of twenty, when she had just came out of the tunnel of drug. Her rough father divorced from her careless mother and Christiane, with her little sister, had to move to Gropiusstadt, where she met the degrading side of life. When she was 12 she smoke marijuana for the fist time, following with LSD, ephedrine, mandrax, until she turned 14 and took Heroine. Since then, she had been taking drugs almost everyday, earning money with prostitution and little robberies. Her mum, after having found the girl fainted in the bathroom with a syringe in a vein, tried every possible rehab but she succeeded only at the age of 17. Christiane still lives in Berlin, has a child and she has had some relapses, but she never forgets her story, also made of friends who died for overdose. I think her life is told in a super-realistic way, full of passions, feelings and emotions that the reader can sense in first person. I loved so much this book that I went to Berlin and I visited Christiane’s places trying to imagine what was the context like at her age. I have hundreds of thing to add, but I must finish here, so I recommend this book with all my