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There are several important levels of setting in these two stories. The main ones have to do with place and time - specifically, the city of Berlin, in Germany, between World Wars I and II. This was a period when Germany was recovering from the financial, military and social hardships resulting from their defeat in the first, and struggling with socio-political upheaval (i.e., the rise of both the Communists and the Nazis) prior to the second. In other words, Berlin in this period was a city of upheaval and transition, a set of circumstances which gives the book a context of instability within which the characters are struggling not only to retain some degree of normality but also to simply survive.