Chapters Bookshop Berlin

On Wednesday 20th May, Quinn Slobodian sits down with Peter Matthews, founding editor of Heist Magazine and host of Dig Where You Stand, for a conversation recorded live at Chapters. Quinn Slobodian has spent years tracing the intellectual lineage of ideas that present themselves as new. His two latest books, Hayek’s Bastards (a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist for criticism) and Muskism, released this March, do exactly that: they follow the money, the theory, and the rhetoric back to where it came from. Slobodian is one of the few historians working today who can make the deep structure of power legible without flattening it. In conversation, Quinn and Peter will pull apart the language of IQ science and “debugging” society, tracing how these ideas connect to something much older and much more dangerous. We are living inside arguments that were made a long time ago. This conversation traces them back to the source. Grab a spot through link in bio. 📍Chapters Bookshop 20th May @ 19:00 Tickets in bio

We are delighted to welcome Hilda Hoy to Chapters for an evening of conversation with Sharmaine Lovegrove around her debut essay collection Mother Tongue, published this March by Wind & Bones. Raised in Taiwan by her Taiwanese mother and Canadian father, bilingual from the beginning, Hoy traces how English became her dominant tongue, and what was lost in that process. When her mother is diagnosed with dementia and begins losing the ability to speak, the repercussions of that loss come into sharp and tender focus. A dear friend of Chapters and a Berlin-based writer, editor, and translator, this is an evening about language, identity, and what it means to find your voice between worlds. Tickets through bio. 📍Chapters Bookshop 27th May @ 19:00 Tickets in bio

We are beyond excited to share with our line-up of events for the month ahead. What an honour it is to host such incredible authors. We continue to be amazed by our incredible community and the conversations we get to start and build upon in this space. As always – come curious, leave with a discovery. April 30th – Desire & Obsession Not quite May, but nearly there – we cannot wait to welcome Sophie Robinson to Chapters to celebrate Oyster Prairie, a novel of queer longing, artistic fixation, and the dangerous pull of becoming someone else. May 7th - Seen & Heard We invite Nicole Louie to Chapters to join Sharmaine in conversation, discussing Others Like Me – a book offering 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. May 11th - Romantic & Ruinous This month, we’re reading You Exist Too Much by Zaina Arafat. Please note that this meeting is already booked out. Write us an email to sign up for future meetings. May 13th - Read & Resist 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. We are honoured to welcome Maaza in conversation with Meret Weber to discuss her upcoming third novel, A Brief Portrait of Small Deaths. May 15th - Listen & Gather We are delighted to welcome writer Jeremy Harding to Chapters for an intimate early-evening conversation around his new book, Analogue Africa: Notes on the Anti-Colonial Imagination.

If you google Sharmaine Lovegrove, you will find many impressive things — including, and most importantly, that she is a sort of activist for diverse storytelling, having founded Dialogue Books and most recently @chapters_berlin . What research won’t tell you, though, is that speaking to Sharmaine feels like a warm spring day. You feel good, and you get the feeling that “everything is possible” when you’re near her. 🌸 Berlin is home to many humans who actively participate in creating the city we want to live in, and Sharmaine is one of them. Read the full chat with her through the link in our bio - always free. #berlin #spaetistories

Last week we hosted a conversation between Nicole Louie @bynicolelouie and Sharmaine Lovegrove @shar_love_ , talking about Others Like Me – a book exploring what it means to live beyond motherhood; by choice, by chance, or somewhere in between. We were overwhelmed by the response from all the women who joined us for the evening, many of whom were visiting Chapters for the first time. Watching a community form before our eyes was a powerful reminder of how books can galvanise communities and bring people together in such meaningful ways. It is to such stories that Chapters is committed to championing; stories that inspire, resonate, and tangibly impact their readers. A huge thank you to Nicole, whose courageous work builds authentic and growing communities in its wake, and thank you to everyone who showed up and shaped the evening into what it was.

Every shelf at Chapters starts with a question, and this one started with a clear one: how is something made, and what does it leave behind? Before interpretation, there is structure, the style, sound, and shape of a thing, the decisions that give a work its order, its rhythm, its force, and every book on this shelf is working with that question: not just what is being said, but how it holds, how a sentence moves, how a voice builds. And yet form is never quite contained, it travels, carrying influence, memory, and culture with it, moving across time, across disciplines, across lives, showing up in places and people you wouldn’t expect. Fiction and non-fiction, music and art, criticism and memoir, writers thinking through their craft alongside works that show it in motion, books that are precise and books that fracture, echo, and return. Because form is never just form, it shapes how we see, how we listen, how we understand what comes next, and building this shelf was a joy, leaning into the craft of creatives and listening to our community talk about their own creative lives, the projects they are working on, the questions they keep returning to, and it has been a genuine pleasure to watch this shelf become a place each of you reach for. ________ Berlin bookstore, art books, reading, independent bookstore, book curation

Women who choose lives beyond motherhood have long been misunderstood. Though well-trodden, this path is rarely given the recognition it deserves. In Others Like Me, Nicole Louie explores what it means to live beyond the narrow expectations of daughter, wife, mother. Part memoir, part collective reflection, it traces the lives of women who have carved out meaning and belonging outside of motherhood—by choice, by chance, or somewhere in between. Join Nicole Louie in conversation with Sharmaine Lovegrove on Others Like Me on Thursday, 7 May at 7pm. The evening will be an empowering, courageous and important one. 📍Chapters Bookshop 7th May @ 19:00 Tickets in bio

On Wednesday May 13th, Chapters hosts Maaza Mengiste in conversation with Meret Weber from The Berlin Review. 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. Join us for what promises to be an evening of serious, searching discussion. Tickets are limited, please secure your ticket via link in our bio! 📍Chapters Bookshop 13th May @ 19:00 —— Photo credits: Maaza portrait by Annette Hornischer

It’s independent bookshop dayyyy! To celebrate we headed to one of our favourite places @chapters_berlin which is really a treasure trove for feminist books. Shown here are a few that caught our eye. It’s official you have permission from us to go treat yourself today as long as it’s an independent bookshop 😘

Today is Independent Bookshop Day I’ve been working in bookshops since I was sixteen. It’s where I learned that books are not just objects, they are the start of a conversation and a way of understanding the world more deeply. What I’ve always loved is when a book helps you see something more clearly, or gives you the language for something you’ve felt for a long time. Talking to writers, getting closer to how they think and work, and then bringing that back into the shop is one of the most special parts of this. It’s a real privilege, and it comes directly from our own love of literature. Chapters comes directly out of that. It’s a continuation of everything I’ve learned about how people find books, talk about them, and carry them with them. Today is also about the people who make it what it is. Mia, Saleema, Cindy, Ysanne and Ramona, who bring knowledge, care and real attention to the work every day. And a huge thanks to every single person who has come through the door, stayed, browsed, bought a book, attended an event and been part of the community.  Independent bookshops only exist because people choose them. Thank you for choosing us. — Sharmaine Lovegrove @shar_love_ Founder

On Thursday evening Nani Jansen Reventlow brought Radical Justice into the room and it was powerful and purposeful. The conversation with @shar_love_ moved between language and justice, discomfort and action, the limits of the law and what lies beyond it. We talked about the awakening that happens when someone learns about their heritage and the racial structures that have shaped their world. About what it means to be part of a movement, and how engagement, real engagement, builds change over time. Nani is someone who has spent her career going to the root of things rather than staying at the surface, and that came through in every answer. What stayed with us afterwards was the simplicity of the central argument. Change is not waiting for the perfect conditions. It is built, slowly, collectively, by people who are willing to stay with the difficulty. Thank you Nani. And thank you to everyone who came, who asked questions, who stayed afterwards. This is exactly what Chapters is for.

In a world that expects all women to become mothers, what happens to those who circumvent motherhood? Join Nicole Louie in conversation with Sharmaine Lovegrove on Others Like Me on Thursday, 7 May at 7pm. In Others Like Me, Louie explores what it means to live beyond the narrow expectations of daughter, wife, mother. Part memoir, part collective reflection, it traces the lives of women who have carved out meaning and belonging outside of motherhood—by choice, by chance, or somewhere in between. We’ll be talking about identity, autonomy, and the courage it takes to define a life on your own terms. Hosted in the intimate space of our bookshop, spaces are limited — tickets in bio.