Isherwood's classic story of Berlin in the 1930s - and the inspiration for
Cabaret
- now in a stand-alone edition.
First published in 1934,
Goodbye to Berlin
has been popularized on stage and screen by Julie Harris in
I Am a Camera
and Liza Minelli in
. Isherwood magnificently captures 1931 Berlin: charming, with its avenues and cafés; marvelously grotesque, with its nightlife and dreamers; dangerous, with its vice and intrigue; powerful and seedy, with its mobs and millionaires — this was the period when Hitler was beginning his move to power.
is inhabited by a wealth of characters: the unforgettable and “divinely decadent”Sally Bowles; plump Fraulein Schroeder, who considers reducing her Buste relieve her heart palpitations; Peter and Otto, a gay couple struggling to come to terms with their relationship; and the distinguished and doomed Jewish family, the Landauers.