Goodbye to Berlin

Author: Christopher Isherwood

Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)

Published on 2 November 1989 by Vintage Publishing (Vintage Classics) in the United Kingdom.

Paperback | 272 pages
199 x 129 x 17 | 192g

1930s Berlin is a realm of glamour and sleaze, excess and repression.

Having moved to the city to work on his novel, Christopher finds himself immersed in a world of contradiction. He becomes enamoured with the local denizens and the colourful lives they lead, meeting an English upper-class waif, the delightfully decadent Sally Bowles; a couple – Peter and Otto – who are struggling with their sexual identities; and a distinguished and doomed Jewish family, the Landauers. With the Nazis rising to power, Christopher’s Berlin is a sparkling city perched on the edge of an abyss.

‘Isherwood is a master’ Evening Standard‘Brilliant sketches of a society in decay’ George Orwell‘Reading this novel is much like overhearing anecdotes in a crowded bar while history knocks impatiently at the windows’ Guardian