Alfred Döblin belongs in the pantheon of great German writers who were born in the final quarter of the nineteenth century, began writing before the First World War, flourished during the Weimar Republic, and went into exile during the Third Reich. Like Kafka, he was a Jew from a lower-middle-class mercantile family. Like the poet Gottfried Benn, he had a parallel career as a practicing physician. Like Thomas Mann, whom he despised, and Bertolt Brecht, whose friend he was, he spent his exile in the exotic refuge of southern California and returned to Europe soon after the war was over. Like the Austrian novelist Joseph Roth, he turned to Catholicism late in life under the pressures of exile.