Businessman turned author John Steinberg from Hampstead publishes second novel Blues Skies Over Berlin ahead of Jewish Book Week
Mattie Lacey-Davidson the Times’ Features Editor interviewed John in February 2017.
John told Mattie “The main thread throughout the book is art, she immerses herself in it to escape any unpalatable reality. It’s about this woman who is emotionally repressed finally coming to terms with who she is.
The book is set during the 1950s and surrounds a young German woman who spends her teenage years in war-torn Berlin. She is a talented and aspiring landscape painter whose mother is unloving, father dies from war injuries and she remains seemly unaffected but the havoc being created all round her.
This is my second novel (the first was called Shimon). I started writing seriously in 2008. I became a playwright, I produced and co-wrote two plays which went on stage at the Fringe Theatre in Hampstead and then decided it was what I wanted to do. One was called In The Balance and the other was W for Banker.
The dialogued, I hope, is quite strong in my books as I learnt to write through the theatre, but I wanted to find out if I could write on my own. I wrote a play about a gladiator who became a sage and I turned that into a novel. That was about a spiritual journey whereas Blue Skies over Berlin is a journey of conscience.”
Stories by John Steinberg 