Goodbye to Berlin
  • Published: 31 March 1997
  • ISBN: 9780749390549
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 272
  • RRP: $22.99

Goodbye to Berlin

Formats & editions
Paperback
31 Jan 2023
Paperback
31 Mar 1997
EBook
30 Sep 2011
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'The best prose writer in English' Gore Vidal

As Cabaret returns to the West End, revisit the KitKat Club in the book that introduced Sally Bowles to the world.

Set in the 1930s, Goodbye to Berlin is the novella that inspired Cabaret, evoking the glamour and sleaze, excess and repression of Berlin society. Isherwood shows the lives of people under threat from the rise of the Nazis: a wealthy Jewish heiress, Natalia Landauer, a gay couple, Peter and Otto, and an English upper-class waif, the divinely decadent Sally Bowles.

'Brilliant sketches of a society in decay' George Orwell

'Isherwood is a master of the emotionally cathartic moment, funny and perspicacious' Evening Standard
  • Published: 31 March 1997
  • ISBN: 9780749390549
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 272
  • RRP: $22.99
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About the author

Christopher Isherwood

Christopher Isherwood (1904-1986) was one of the most celebrated writers of his generation. He left Cambridge without graduating, briefly studied medicine and then turned to writing his first novels, All the Conspirators and The Memorial. Between 1929 and 1939 he lived mainly abroad, spending four years in Berlin and writing the novels Mr Norris Changes Trains and Goodbye to Berlin on which the musical Cabaret was based. He moved to America in 1939, becoming a US citizen in 1946, and wrote another five novels, including Down There on a Visit and A Single Man, a travel book about South America and a biography of the Indian mystic Ramakrishna. In the late 1960s and '70s he turned to autobiographical works: Kathleen and Frank, Christopher and His Kind, My Guru and His Disciple and October, one month of his diary with drawings by Don Bachardy.

portrait photo of Christopher Isherwood

Also by Christopher Isherwood

The Animals
My Guru and His Disciple
The Condor and the Cows
Kathleen and Frank
Lions and Shadows
Down There on a Visit
The World in the Evening
See all

Praise for Goodbye to Berlin

A brilliant semi-autobiographical account of early 1930s Berlin.

Lonely Planet Magazine

A great talent

Guardian

Isherwood is a master of the emotionally cathartic moment, funny and perspicacious

Evening Standard

A masterpiece

The Economist

[A] reminder of a bygone era, powerfully capturing the energy and sleaze of Weimar-era Berlin

Independent

Reading this novel is much like overhearing anecdotes in a crowded bar while history knocks impatiently at the windows

John Sutherland, Guardian, 1000 novels everyone must read

Brilliant sketches of a society in decay.

George Orwell

Christopher Isherwood’s brilliant novel

Time Out