Goodbye To Berlin | Penguin Books Australia Christopher Isherwood "I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking," are the famous lines on the first page. This a semiautobiographical account of Isherwood's time in 1930s Berlin. Written as a connected series of six short stories the book, first published in 1939, is a brilliant evocation of the decadence and repression, glamour and sleaze of Berlin society. Isherwood shows the lives of people at threat from the rise of the Nazis: Natalia Laundauer, the rich, Jewish heiress, Peter and Otto, a gay couple andthe "divinely decadent" Sally Bowles, a young English woman who was so memorably portrayed by Liza Minnelli. Format & Editions GOODBYE TO BERLIN | PDF to Flipbook [close] p. 3 Christopher Isherwood was bom in 1904 at High Lane, Cheshire, and educated at Repton School and Corpus Chrisu College, Cambridge. His first novel. All the Conspirators, was published in 1928.

In the following year he went to Berlin and remained there, supporting himself by teaching EngUsh, until Hitler came to power in 1933. While Isherwood was in Germany his second novel. The Memorial, was published, but it was not until 1935 that the first of the famous 'Berlin* books, Mr Norris Changes Trains, appeared, followed in 1937 by the novella Sally Bowles and in 1939 by Goodbye to Berlin. The late 1930s also saw the fruitful collaboration between Isherwood and the poet W. H. Auden which produced three plays (The Dog Beneath the Skin, Ascent of F6 and On the Frontier) and a book based on their trip to China during the Japanese invasion of the country. Journey to a War, An autobiographical work. Lions and Shadows, was published in 1938.

Early in 1939 Isherwood settled in the USA, where his growing interest in metaphysics and eastern philosophy led to a close association with the Vedanta Society of Los Angeles and to his cooperation on the translations of several Hindu classics, including the Bhagavad-Gita, He worked as a scriptwriter in Hollywood and has taught at various Califomian universities. His later work includes several also more novels, a book of travel and two further volumes of autobiography. The fascination of the subject-matter, the qualities of detached humour, irony and unerring observation of human weakness which distinguished the *BerHn' books were largely responsible for establishing Isherwood's reputation with the general public. The highly successful play / a Camera, based on Goodbye to Berlin, was made into a film in 1955; the musical Cabaret became an Oscar- winning film in 1972, starring Liza Minnelli as Sally Bowles and Michael York as *Herr Issyvoo'. An American citizen since 1946, Christopher Isherwood lives in Santa Monica, California. Am [close] p.

4 Also by Christopher Isherwood Fiction All the Conspirators The Memorial Mr Norris Sally Changes Trains Bowles in the Prater Violet The World Evening Visit Down There on a A A Single Man Meeting by the River Collected Fiction The Berlin of Sally Bowles Plays (in collaboration with W. H. Auden) The Dog Beneath Ascent of F6 the Skin On the Frontier Autobiography Lions and Shadows Kathleen and Frank Christopher and His Kind Travel Journey to a The Condor and Translations War (in collaboration with W. H. Auden) the Cows (with The Bhagavad-Gita Shankara's Swami Prabhavananda) of Jewel-Crest Discrimination (with Swami Prabhavananda) How to Know God; The Yoga Aphorisms Swami Prabhavananda) of Patanjali (with Baudelaire's Intimate Journals Miscellaneous Exhumations Ramakrishna and his Disciples Vedanta for Modern Man Vedanta for the West [close] p.

6 Published in 1977 by Triad/Panther Books Frogmore, St Albans AL2 22NF ISBN o 586 04795 6 Triad Paperbacks Ltd is an imprint of Chatto, Bodley Head & Jonathan Cape Ltd and Granada Publishing Ltd First published by The Hoganh Press 1939 Copyright Made and 1939 Printed in Great Britain by © Christopher Isherwood Richard Clay (The Chaucer Press) Ltd Bungay, Suffolk Set in Linotype Plantin. This book shall not, is sold subject to the condition that it by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. [close] p. 11 The Author's introductory note to the first edition of GOODBYE TO BERLIN The six pieces tinuous narrative. contained in this volume form a roughly conThey are the only existing fragments of what was originally planned as a huge episodic novel of pre- to call it The Lost.

old title has been changed, however; it is too grandiose for this short loosely-connected sequence of diaries and sketches. Hitler Berlin. I had intended My Readers of Mr Norris Changes Trains (published in the United States as The Last of Mr Norris) may notice that certain characters and situations in that novel overlap and contradict what I have written here - Sally Bowles, for instance, would have run into Mr Norris on Frl. Schroeder's staircase; Christopher Isherwood would certainly have come home one evening to find William Bradshaw asleep in his bed. explanation is simple: The adventures of Mr Norris once formed part of The Lost itself. Because I have given my own name to the *I' of this narrative, readers are certainly not entitled to assume that its p>ages are purely autobiographical, or that its characters are The libellously exact is portraits of living persons. ^Christopher Isherwood' more. a convenient ventriloquist's dimmiy, nothing The first Berlin Diary, The Nowaks and The Landauers, have already appeared, in John Lehmann's New Writing, Sally Bowles was originally published as a separate volume by the Hogarth Press. C. I.

September 1935 [close] p. 13 A BERLIN DIARY (Autumn 1930) the deep solemn massive street. Cellarshops where the lamps burn all day, under the shadow of topheavy balconied facades, dirty plaster frontages embossed with scrollwork and heraldic devices. The whole district is like this: street leading into street of houses like shabby monumental safes crammed with the tarnished valuables and second-hand furniture of a bankrupt middle class. I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking. Recording the man shaving at the window opposite and the woman in the kimono washing her hair. Some day, all this will have to be developed, carefully printed, fixed. At eight o'clock in the evening the house-doors v/ill be locked. The children are having supper. The shops are shut. The electric-sign is switched on over the night-bell of the little hotel on the corner, where you can hire a room by the hour. And soon the whistling will begin. Young men are calling their girls.

Standing down there in the cold, they whistle up at the lighted windows of warm rooms where the beds are already turned down for the night. They want to be let in. Their signals echo down the deep hollow street, lascivious and private and sad. Because of the whistling, I do not care to stay here in the evenings. It reminds me that I am in a foreign city, alone, far from home. Sometimes I determine not to listen to it, pick up a book, try to read. But soon a call is sure to sound, so piercing, so insistent, so despairingly human, that at last I have to get up and peep through the slats of the Venetian blind to make sure that it is not - as I know very well it could not possibly be - for me. From my window, The lighted extraordinary smell in this room when the stove is and the window shut; not altogether unpleasant, a mixture of incense and stale buns. The tall tiled stove, gor- [close] p. 14 12 GOODBYE TO BERLIN altar. geously coloured, like an shrine.

The washstand like a Gothic The cupboard : also is Gothic, with carved cathedral Bismarck faces the King of Prussia in stained glass. would do for a bishop's throne. In the comer, three sham mediaeval halberds (from a theatrical touring company?) are fastened together to form a hatstand. Frl. Schroeder unscrews the heads of the halberds and polishes them from time to time. They are heavy and sharp enough to windows My best chair kill. Everything in the room is like that: unnecessarily solid, abnormally heavy and dangerously sharp. Here, at the writingtable, I am confronted by a phalanx of metal objects - a pair of candlesticks shaped like entwined serpents, an ashtray from which emerges the head of a crocodile, a paper-knife copied from a Florentine dagger, a brass dolphin holding on the end of its tail a small broken clock. What becomes of such things? How could they ever be destroyed? They will probably remain intact for thousands of years people will treasure them in museums. Or perhaps they will merely be melted dov/n for munitions in a war. Every morning, Frl.

Schroeder arranges them very carefully in certain unvarying positions there they stand, like an uncompromising statement of her views on : : Capital and Society, Religion and Sex. All day long she goes padding about the large dingy flat. room, in carpet slippers and a flowered dressing-gown pinned ingeniously together, so that not an inch of petticoat or bodice is to be seen, flicking with her duster, peeping, spying, poking her short pointed nose into the cupboards and luggage of her lodgers. She has dark, bright, inquisitive eyes and pretty waved brown hair of which she is proud. She must be about Shapeless but alert, she waddles from room to fifty-five years old. ago, before the War and the Inflation, she used to be comparatively well off. She went to the Baltic for her summer holidays and kept a maid to do the housework. For the last Long thirty years she has lived here started doing * it "Lina," my and taken in lodgers. She because she liked to have company. friends used to say to me, **however can you? [close] p.

15 ' : — 13 A BERLIN DIARY How can you bear to have strange people living in your rooms and spoiling your furniture, especially when you've got the money to be independent?" And I*d always give them the same answer. "My lodgers aren't lodgers," I used to say. "They're my guests." I Tou I see, Herr Issyvoo, in those days could afford to be very particular about the sort of people who came to live here. could pick and choose. I only took them really well connected and well educated - proper gentlefolk (lie yourself, Herr Issyvoo). I had a Freiherr once, and a Rittmeister and a Professor. They often gave me presents - a bottle of cognac or a box of chocolates or some flowers. And when one of them went away for his holidays he'd always send me a card from London, might be, or Paris, or Baden-Baden. Ever .' I used to get And now Frl. Schroeder has not even got a room of her own. She has to sleep in the living-room, behind a screen, on a small sofa with broken springs.

As in so many of the older Berlin flats, our living-room conneas the front part of thef house with the back. The lodgers who live on the front have to pass through the living-room on their way to the bathroom, so that Frl. Schroeder is often disturbed during the night. *But I drop off again at once. It doesn't worry me. I'm much too tired.' She has to do all the housework herself and it takes up most of her day. *Twenty years ago, if anybody had told me to scrub my own floors, I'd have slapped his face for him. But you get used to it. You can get used to anything. Why, I remember the time when I'd have sooner cut off my right hand than empty this chamber And now,' says Frl. Schroeder, suiting the action to the word, *My goodness It's no more to me than pouring out a cup of tea it such pretty cards . . . . . ! !

stains left fond of pointing out to me the various marks and by lodgers who have inhabited this room "Yes, Herr Issyvoo, I've got something to remember each Look there, on the rug - I've sent it to the of them by cleaners I don't know how often but nothing will get it out that's where Herr Noeske was sick after his birthday party. She is . . . Goodbye Berlin: Amazon.co.uk: Wolfgang Herrndorf: 9782364740372: Books 5.0 out of 5 stars Good book 29 Dec. 2013 By JP78 - Published on Amazon.com Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase I'm acting in a production of "Cabaret" and decided to read the book on which it is loosely based, just for a little background. I wasn't at all familiar with Christopher Isherwood, so I had no idea what to expect. I'm a bit of a pre-WWII German history nerd so I knew a fair amount about the politics of the period, but knew nothing about the cabaret culture and the people who inhabited that world.

I was immediately drawn in, and didn't want to put the book down when it ended. The characters are well-drawn, and even the not-so-likeable were portrayed as multifaceted, complex human beings -- real people -- living in an amoral, hedonistic culture where pretty much everything was permissible. Most chose not to see what was going on outside their own little part of Berlin, and were indifferent to it if they did see. And why not? They moved in a time and place that were somehow outside reality. Few of them were rich, but many were capable of living as if they were, simply by telling a few lies and acting the part. One could get money, one way or another. Pleasure was the goal, and if one stayed in the right circle, life was a party. There was, as there always is, another side of the story. In this case, it was the poor who lived outside the charmed circle, scraping by any way they could. Their existence was day-to-day, with hunger, disease, miserable living conditions and winter cold or oppressive summer heat as their constant companions.

Isherwood drew these characters, too, as complex humans, motivated not by the pursuit of pleasure but by the desire to survive. After reading "The Berlin Stories" I spent quite a bit of time online, finding out more not only about the cabaret culture, but about Berlin in they months preceding the Nazi takeover of the German government. What a time it was. And to think I discovered it because I'm in a play and simply wanted to find some stuff to help me develop my character. 5.0 out of 5 stars This book is a masterpiece of style and great story-telling. 31 Aug. 2016 By Aspame - Published on Amazon.com Verified Purchase Having seen Cabaret, I was certainly aware of Christopher Isherwood. After reading a biography of Joel Grey, my interest was further piqued and I decided to buy Isherwood's "The Berlin Stories," upon which "I Am a Camera" and "Cabaret" were based. Isherwood is a wonderful writer and stylist.

The second paragraph in his novel, "A Berlin Diary" (the second novel in this book) is one of the most finely crafted paragraphs I've ever read: "I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking. Recording the man shaving at the window opposite and the woman in the kimono washing her hair. Some day, all this will have to be developed, carefully printed, fixed." The characters are wonderfully developed. Isherwood does a masterful job of describing their everyday lives against a background in which the Nazi presence is at first only fleetingly acknowledged and then steadily becomes a larger and more menacing presence as the stories progress. His ability to focus on everyday life while merely implying the terror that is about to engulf their society gives that threat of terror even greater impact. This book is a masterpiece of style and great story-telling. 2 of 2 people found the following review helpful 5.0 out of 5 stars Must-reading 9 July 2014 By John Favaro - Published on Amazon.com Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase If you are at all interested in the origins of the musical "Cabaret" then this is must-reading.

You will find everybody here - Sally Bowles, Natalia Landauer, the rest. Much of the original is very different from the musical (and the play), but Isherwood was happy with everything they did with it. In fact, one of the nice things is his own preface to the stories, written at a distance of many years. Not only was he a writer of great humanity, but he comes across as a person you would have liked to have known. Yet another extra addition is an introduction by Armistead Maupin. 1 of 1 people found the following review helpful 5.0 out of 5 stars Isherwood's masterpiece. 17 May 2012 By I. Sondel - Published on Amazon.com Format: Paperback Verified Purchase One of the small pleasures of growing older is that you can re-read your favourite books and, for the most part, they seem fresh and new; one fondly recalls the core story but generally forgets the local colour, the descriptions and prose styling.

I was recently reading "Eminent Outlaws: The Gay Writers Who Changed America" by Christopher Bram; in it he discussed Christopher Isherwood and "Goodbye to Berlin." Ironically my online book group was reading it at the same time. So, I decided to re-read it for the first time in twenty-five years. I have always been a vicarious traveller. I've been to Italy with James and du Maurier, France with Stein and Baldwin, Spain with Hemingway, China with Pearl Buck, Burma with Orwell, and India with Ackerley and Forster; all memorable trips, but Germany with Isherwood has been a special treat. I love the interaction of the characters and how Isherwood introduces them to us. I thoroughly enjoyed the milieu of the boarding-house, and the decadence of Berlin circa 1930. Yes, there were Nazis, but their presence added a sense of tension and romance to Isherwood's grand adventure. Sally Bowles is an exasperating creature. One loves and loathes her simultaneously. Is she endearing or a nuisance? Both. Is she wicked? No. Self-absorbed? Yes, quite so.

One is left with the impression that poor Sally is never going to amount to much as an actress or a singer. She lacks talent, discipline and the requisite commitment to her craft. Instead she seems content to sleep her way to success, only the poor creature hasn't the good sense to sleep with the appropriate people. She is a good-time girl with delusions of grandeur. It is her imperfections that make her such a memorable character (indeed, actresses as diverse as Julie Harris, Judi Dench, Liza Minnelli and Natasha Richards have played her in dramatizations for stage and screen). I laughed out loud when Sally commented that her lover's underclothes wear was so old and raggedy that they could have belonged to John the Baptist. The scenes with Chris, Peter and Otto on the island were truly inspired. Ah, Otto. Who hasn't known an Otto? He's a taker. But then Peter is a user too, isn't he, in his own way? I mean in the end, you get what you pay for. Perhaps if Peter had been more of a man and less of a fishwife...but this was always going to be a short lived relationship.

I found the ending of the "The Nowaks" moving. The images of the patients standing around the bus as it readies for departure are indelibly etched in my mind. Otto really became quite annoying; it's a wonder he lived passed puberty. I think I could have lived in that house for about an hour. "The Landauers" section was particularly fine. Natalia is a great character. I loved the scene where Natalia met Sally and they didn't hit it off - Sally stuck her foot in her mouth after only having said hello. Christopher seems to be the only non-anti Semite he knows. Bernhard is an emotional cripple; manipulative, mysterious and creepy at the same time. Sally, Otto, Peter, Bernhard...does Christopher seek out neurotic, wayward people because he "likes" them or because as a writer he finds them fascinating? The final diary entries deftly capture the sense of foreboding and dread as Berlin became the epicentre of a political earthquake that precipitated the Second World War.

The descriptions of driving through Berlin with the doomed Weimar police chief, the workers taking to the streets singing The International, and the author's smiling reflection in a shop window are the work of writer of genius. I read this slowly - savoured it - lazed about Frl. Schroeder's listening to the gossip, hoping she'd make me an omelette. 2 of 2 people found the following review helpful 5.0 out of 5 stars Mr Isherwood brings the early 20th Century to you 19 Nov. 2013 By Buddy Massey - Published on Amazon.com Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase I Love learning History by reading Diaries and Journals.

Mr Isherwood was in the right places at the right time, I don't think anybody else who went through those Decades were as gifted a writer as Mr Isherwood brings those eras to light and in this gifted writer we can experience what he sees and does as if it were your own remembraces.I would also like to thank the seller and Amazon.Com especially for the ease of shopping from home- I purchased this item from Amazon.Com(s) Kindle Library and especially like receiving my books in seconds and you can't beat the Kindle Prices Goodbye Berlin by Christopher Isherwood, First Edition - AbeBooks Goodbye Berlin by Christopher Isherwood, First Edition You Searched For: Results (1 - 30) of 60 1 Published by Signet Books. New York: New American Library. (1952) Used Paperback First Edition Used Soft cover First Edition Quantity Available: 1 Published by Signet Books. New York: New American Library.

(1952) Used Paperback First Edition Published by Penguin, GB (1945) Used Paperback First Edition Published by Signet (1952), (New York) (1952) Used Wraps First Edition Destination, Rates & Speeds Item Description: Signet (1952), (New York), 1952. Wraps. Book Condition: Very good. First edition thus. 16mo. Perfect bound in pictorial wraps. About very good. Light edgewear, inchlong crease/scratch to front cover, sunning to spine. Pages with the usual age-toning but good and sound. 167pp. First Signet printing of Isherwood's novel set in Weimar Germany, which has appeared alongside MR NORRIS CHANGES TRAINS as THE BERLIN STORIES. Photograph of Sally Bowles on back, who starred in I AM A CAMERA, the Broadway version of this book, alongside a photo of Isherwood.

Bookseller Inventory # 18091 Published by Hogarth Press, London (1939) Used Hardcover First Edition Published by Penguin, GB (1945) Used Paperback First Edition Published by Penguin, London (1945) Used Original Wraps First Edition Quantity Available: 1 Destination, Rates & Speeds Item Description: Penguin, London, 1945. Original Wraps. Book Condition: Very Good Indeed. No Jacket. First Edition. Very good first printing of the Penguin issue. Seems an unread copy in very sharp condition. The covers are still quite bright. Very minimal age toning to text block and covers. As an enthusiastic collector myself I make every effort to provide a high level of service. Enquiries welcomed. Paypal accepted. Bookseller Inventory # 007296 Published by Signet Books. New York: New American Library. (1952) Used Paperback First Edition Published by The Hogarth Press, London (1939) Used Hardcover First Edition Published by New Directions, New York (1945) Used Hardcover First Edition Destination, Rates & Speeds Item Description: New Directions, New York (1945). Original Cloth.

First Edition. 8vo., 207pp. A very good copy in a fair dust jacket. The jacket has chips at top and bottom of spine, a one inch closed tear in the bottom edge of the back panel and is moderately soiled. Bookseller Inventory # 369 Published by The Hogarth Press, London (1966) Used Hardcover First Edition Destination, Rates & Speeds Item Description: The Hogarth Press, London, 1966. Hardcover. Book Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Fair. 1st Edition. Sixth impression (first was in 1939). Turquoise cloth boards. Gilt titles spine. Slightly bumped spine ends. Soiled head edges. Mildly tanned endpapers and pages. Contents clean and firm. Black and white dust jacket illustrated with photograph by Angus McBean. Inner surface tanned and watermark head edge and back flap fold. Outer surface rubbed and slightly soiled. Edges creased and chipped. 10-15mm tears head edge back and back spine fold, with 100mm transverse crease joining them. Unclipped.

Bookseller Inventory # 001040 Published by The Folio Society, London (1975) Used Hardcover First Edition Destination, Rates & Speeds Item Description: The Folio Society, London, 1975. Hardcover. Book Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Good +. George Grosz (illustrator). First Thus. London: The Folio Society, 1975 256 pp with B&W drawings in text. Text is clean, tight and unmarked. Boards are covered i cloth decorated with George Grosz drawings. Spine a little yellowed. Very lightt bumping to spine ends. Pale grey case is rubbed at corners with slight loss of material but no splits. First Thus. Cased Hardcover. Very Good/Good +. Illus. by George Grosz. Bookseller Inventory # 001649 Published by The Folio Society, London (1977) Used Hardcover First Edition Published by Folio Society, (1975) Used Hardcover First Edition Destination, Rates & Speeds Item Description: Folio Society, 1975.

8vo., First Edition thus, with a portrait frontispiece and 11 full-page illustrations in the text; original pictorial cloth, backstrip blocked in black, brown top, brown endpapers, backstrip very lightly sunned else a very good, clean copy in publisher's card slip-case. Scarce in this condition. Bookseller Inventory # 27186 Published by Folio Society, (1975) Used Hardcover First Edition Destination, Rates & Speeds Item Description: Folio Society, 1975. 8vo. First Edition thus, with portrait frontispiece and 11 full-page illustrations in the text; original pictorial cloth, backstrip blocked in black, brown top, brown endpapers, backstrip very lightly sunned else a very good, clean copy in publisher's card slip-case. Scarce in this condition.

Bookseller Inventory # 27239 Published by Tel Aviv (1975) Used Soft Cover First Edition Quantity Available: 1 Published by Zephyr Books / The Continental Book Company, Stockholm (1947) Used Soft cover First Edition Quantity Available: 1 Destination, Rates & Speeds Item Description: Zephyr Books / The Continental Book Company, Stockholm, 1947. Soft cover. Book Condition: Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Good. First Thus. 12mo - over 6¾ - 7¾" tall. A well preserved copy of Isherwood's best known work, volume No. 26 in the Zephyr series, complete with dustwrapper. Copyright date 1947, 160 titles listed on back dw flap, 2 stars on dw spine, so ?2nd impression. Cream wraps, edges slightly browned. Dustwrapper edgeworn, small loss upper front, spine slightly faded. Inner hinges just starting, text block edges browned. Owner name top ffep, otherwise internally unmarked. 317 pp.

Bookseller Inventory # 007127 Published by New Directions NYC 1945 (1945) Used Hardcover First Edition Published by (New York): A New Directions Book published by James Laughlin, Used Hardcover First Edition Destination, Rates & Speeds Item Description: (New York): A New Directions Book published by James Laughlin, (1945). First U.S. edition, first printing. Owner's name and address to front pastedown, else a solid very good plus copy; in a quite substantially browned pictorial dust jacket which also shows some rubbing, and shallow chipping at the extremities. I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking. Recording the man shaving at the window opposite and the woman in the kimono washing her hair. Some day, all this will have to be developed, carefully printed, fixed.

Bookseller Inventory # 4447800 Published by New Directions, New York (1945) Used Hardcover First Edition Published by Random House (1939) Used Hardcover First Edition Published by New Directions, New York (1945) Used Hardcover First Edition Destination, Rates & Speeds Item Description: New Directions, New York, 1945. Hardcover. Book Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good. First Edition. Gray cloth, slight spine slant, mildly bumped corners. Bookplate to fep and PO name to ffep, PO blind stamp to half-title page. Unclipped DJ in mylar chipped at spine ends, corners, top front panel, rubbed at edges. ; 8vo 8" - 9" tall. Bookseller Inventory # 18130 Published by Hogarth Press, London (1939) Used Hardcover First Edition Destination, Rates & Speeds Item Description: Hogarth Press, London, 1939. Hard Cover. Book Condition: Very Good. No Jacket. First Edition.

First printing dated 1939 at bottom of title page , oatmeal cloth boards with red titles to spine , 317 printed pages . No inscriptions , no tears , pages are complete , slightly toned to edges , very very minor foxing to endpapers , front and back boards are clean , slight yellowing to the spine , red top pages edges , corners are sharp , spine tips not pushed , nice copy of a scarce title . , Sent well packaged . We are a full time Independent bookseller established in 1999. Bookseller Inventory # 88847792 Published by Random House (1939) Used Hardcover First Edition Destination, Rates & Speeds Item Description: Random House, 1939. hardcover. Book Condition: Good. First Edition. First edition; cover rubbed/lightly soiled, corners and spine ends lightly rubbed/bumped; edges lightly soiled/foxed; endpapers very age-toned; ffep has black ink inscription and faint erasures; pages age-toned; binding tight; cover, edges, and interior intact and clean except as noted.

Bookseller Inventory # 609848 Large collection of seventeen various books by Christopher Isherwood and Stephen Spender, comprising the following titles: * . ***** All the Conspirators. The Condor and the Cows. Diaries: Volume One, 1939-1960. Kathleen and Frank. Lost Years: A Memoir, 1945-1951. hardcover, in dust jacket. A Meeting by the River. The Memorial. Prater Violet. First American edition, hardcover, small name details on front loose endpaper. My Guru and His Disciple. A Single Man. The Temple by Stephen Spender. Goodbye to Berlin. First edition thus in the Readers Union edition. Hardcover, little worn copy. Down There On a Visit. China Diary. By Stephen Spender and David Hockney. First edition, nice copy in dust jacket. Mr Norris Changes Trains. The Ascent of F6. ISHERWOOD, Christopher. and, Stephen Spender. and, W.H. Auden.

Published by London / New York / America, Grove Press / Vintage / North Point Press / University of Minnesota Press / Chatto & Windus / Methuen / New Directions / Reader's Union / Thames and Hudson / Penguin / Faber / Random House / The Hogarth Press, 's-2000's. (1930) Used Hardcover First Edition Destination, Rates & Speeds Item Description: London / New York / America, Grove Press / Vintage / North Point Press / University of Minnesota Press / Chatto & Windus / Methuen / New Directions / Reader's Union / Thames and Hudson / Penguin / Faber / Random House / The Hogarth Press, 's-2000's., 1930. All volumes 8vo. or.pict. wrap. and, royal 8vo. or.pict. wrap. and five books as noted are thick royal 8vo. or.cl. and, 8vo. or.pict. cl. and, 4to.or.cl. OCTAVO SIZE. QUARTO SIZE. HARDCOVER. WRAPPERED EDITION. Noted British homosexual writers. SEVENTEEN BOOKS IN TOTAL. Includes some first editions and thus.

All books in very good plus condition, bar #17 which is a reading copy only; and two books in dust jackets as noted. #AAA1. Large collection of seventeen various books by Christopher Isherwood and Stephen Spender, comprising the following titles: * . ***** All the Conspirators. The Condor and the Cows. Diaries: Volume One, 1939-1960. Kathleen and Frank. Lost Years: A Memoir, 1945-1951. hardcover, in dust jacket. A Meeting by the River. The Memorial. Prater Violet. First American edition, hardcover, small name details on front loose endpaper. My Guru and His Disciple. A Single Man. The Temple by Stephen Spender. Goodbye to Berlin. First edition thus in the Readers Union edition. Hardcover, little worn copy. Down There On a Visit. China Diary. By Stephen Spender and David Hockney. First edition, nice copy in dust jacket. Mr Norris Changes Trains. The Ascent of F6. and, On the Frontier. Lions and Shadows: An Education in the Twenties. first edition, hardcover. . *****.

Bookseller Inventory # 25720 Destination, Rates & Speeds Item Description: Hogarth Press, London, 1939. Hardcover. Book Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: No Dust Jacket. First Edition. 'The six pieces contained in this volume form a roughly continuous narrative. They are the only existing fragments of what was originally planned as a huge episodic novel of pre-Hitler Berlin. I had intended to call it The Lost. My old title has been changed, however; it is too grandiose for this short loosely-connected sequence of diaries and sketches. Readers of Mr. Norris Changes Trains (published in the United States as The Last of Mr. Norris) may notice that certain characters and situations in that novel overlap and contradict what I have written here-Sally Bowles, for instance, would have run into Mr. Norris on Frl. Schroeder's staircase; Christopher Isherwood would certainly have come home one evening to find William Bradshaw asleep in his bed. The explanation is simple: The adventures of Mr. Norris once formed part of The Lost itself.

Because I have given my own name to the "I" of this narrative, readers are certainly not entitled to assume that its pages are purely autobiographical, or that its characters are libellously exact portraits of living persons. "Christopher Isherwood" is a convenient ventriloquist's dummy, nothing more.' Book - [SEE SCAN] - in Near Very Good oatmeal cloth boards with red lettering - some marking to the back board and some browning to the spine but the lettering is still bright. Contents, [SEE SCANS] - some browning to the front and rear end paper and half title page, previous owner's name 'Antony Whitlock 18.10.39' to the front end paper and a neat stamp 'The Times Book Club, 42 Wigmore Street, London, W1' to the bottom edge of the rear paste down and a '3-39' to the bottom edge of the rear free end paper otherwise clean, bright and tightly bound. Size: 7.25 inches tall by 4.75 inches. 317 pages. Quantity Available: 1. Shipped Weight: 201-750 grams.

Category: Fiction; Main Picture: Book Boards. Picture 2: Title Page. Picture 3: Verso of Title Page with enhanced Publishing Details. Picture 4: Inscription to Front Free Endpaper. Pictures of this item not already displayed here available upon request. Inventory No: 5794. Bookseller Inventory # 5794 Buy Goodbye to Berlin (Penguin Classics) Book Online at Low Prices in India | Goodbye to Berlin (Penguin Classics) Reviews & Ratings - Amazon.in 5.0 out of 5 stars Good book 29 December 2013 By JP78 - Published on Amazon.com Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase I'm acting in a production of "Cabaret" and decided to read the book on which it is loosely based, just for a little background. I wasn't at all familiar with Christopher Isherwood, so I had no idea what to expect. I'm a bit of a pre-WWII German history nerd so I knew a fair amount about the politics of the period, but knew nothing about the cabaret culture and the people who inhabited that world. I was immediately drawn in, and didn't want to put the book down when it ended.

The characters are well-drawn, and even the not-so-likeable were portrayed as multifaceted, complex human beings -- real people -- living in an amoral, hedonistic culture where pretty much everything was permissible. Most chose not to see what was going on outside their own little part of Berlin, and were indifferent to it if they did see. And why not? They moved in a time and place that were somehow outside reality. Few of them were rich, but many were capable of living as if they were, simply by telling a few lies and acting the part. One could get money, one way or another. Pleasure was the goal, and if one stayed in the right circle, life was a party. There was, as there always is, another side of the story. In this case, it was the poor who lived outside the charmed circle, scraping by any way they could. Their existence was day-to-day, with hunger, disease, miserable living conditions and winter cold or oppressive summer heat as their constant companions. Isherwood drew these characters, too, as complex humans, motivated not by the pursuit of pleasure but by the desire to survive.

After reading "The Berlin Stories" I spent quite a bit of time online, finding out more not only about the cabaret culture, but about Berlin in they months preceding the Nazi takeover of the German government. What a time it was. And to think I discovered it because I'm in a play and simply wanted to find some stuff to help me develop my character. 5.0 out of 5 stars This book is a masterpiece of style and great story-telling. 31 August 2016 By Aspame - Published on Amazon.com Verified Purchase Having seen Cabaret, I was certainly aware of Christopher Isherwood. After reading a biography of Joel Grey, my interest was further piqued and I decided to buy Isherwood's "The Berlin Stories," upon which "I Am a Camera" and "Cabaret" were based. Isherwood is a wonderful writer and stylist. The second paragraph in his novel, "A Berlin Diary" (the second novel in this book) is one of the most finely crafted paragraphs I've ever read: "I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking. Recording the man shaving at the window opposite and the woman in the kimono washing her hair.

Some day, all this will have to be developed, carefully printed, fixed." The characters are wonderfully developed. Isherwood does a masterful job of describing their everyday lives against a background in which the Nazi presence is at first only fleetingly acknowledged and then steadily becomes a larger and more menacing presence as the stories progress. His ability to focus on everyday life while merely implying the terror that is about to engulf their society gives that threat of terror even greater impact. This book is a masterpiece of style and great story-telling. 2 of 2 people found the following review helpful 5.0 out of 5 stars Must-reading 9 July 2014 By John Favaro - Published on Amazon.com Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase If you are at all interested in the origins of the musical "Cabaret" then this is must-reading. You will find everybody here - Sally Bowles, Natalia Landauer, the rest. Much of the original is very different from the musical (and the play), but Isherwood was happy with everything they did with it. In fact, one of the nice things is his own preface to the stories, written at a distance of many years.

Not only was he a writer of great humanity, but he comes across as a person you would have liked to have known. Yet another extra addition is an introduction by Armistead Maupin. 1 of 1 people found the following review helpful 5.0 out of 5 stars Isherwood's masterpiece. 17 May 2012 By I. Sondel - Published on Amazon.com Format: Paperback Verified Purchase One of the small pleasures of growing older is that you can re-read your favourite books and, for the most part, they seem fresh and new; one fondly recalls the core story but generally forgets the local colour, the descriptions and prose styling. I was recently reading "Eminent Outlaws: The Gay Writers Who Changed America" by Christopher Bram; in it he discussed Christopher Isherwood and "Goodbye to Berlin." Ironically my online book group was reading it at the same time. So, I decided to re-read it for the first time in twenty-five years. I have always been a vicarious traveller.

I've been to Italy with James and du Maurier, France with Stein and Baldwin, Spain with Hemingway, China with Pearl Buck, Burma with Orwell, and India with Ackerley and Forster; all memorable trips, but Germany with Isherwood has been a special treat. I love the interaction of the characters and how Isherwood introduces them to us. I thoroughly enjoyed the milieu of the boarding-house, and the decadence of Berlin circa 1930. Yes, there were Nazis, but their presence added a sense of tension and romance to Isherwood's grand adventure. Sally Bowles is an exasperating creature. One loves and loathes her simultaneously. Is she endearing or a nuisance? Both. Is she wicked? No. Self-absorbed? Yes, quite so. One is left with the impression that poor Sally is never going to amount to much as an actress or a singer. She lacks talent, discipline and the requisite commitment to her craft. Instead she seems content to sleep her way to success, only the poor creature hasn't the good sense to sleep with the appropriate people. She is a good-time girl with delusions of grandeur.

It is her imperfections that make her such a memorable character (indeed, actresses as diverse as Julie Harris, Judi Dench, Liza Minnelli and Natasha Richards have played her in dramatizations for stage and screen). I laughed out loud when Sally commented that her lover's underclothes wear was so old and raggedy that they could have belonged to John the Baptist. The scenes with Chris, Peter and Otto on the island were truly inspired. Ah, Otto. Who hasn't known an Otto? He's a taker. But then Peter is a user too, isn't he, in his own way? I mean in the end, you get what you pay for. Perhaps if Peter had been more of a man and less of a fishwife...but this was always going to be a short lived relationship. I found the ending of the "The Nowaks" moving. The images of the patients standing around the bus as it readies for departure are indelibly etched in my mind. Otto really became quite annoying; it's a wonder he lived passed puberty. I think I could have lived in that house for about an hour. "The Landauers" section was particularly fine. Natalia is a great character.

I loved the scene where Natalia met Sally and they didn't hit it off - Sally stuck her foot in her mouth after only having said hello. Christopher seems to be the only non-anti Semite he knows. Bernhard is an emotional cripple; manipulative, mysterious and creepy at the same time. Sally, Otto, Peter, Bernhard...does Christopher seek out neurotic, wayward people because he "likes" them or because as a writer he finds them fascinating? The final diary entries deftly capture the sense of foreboding and dread as Berlin became the epicentre of a political earthquake that precipitated the Second World War. The descriptions of driving through Berlin with the doomed Weimar police chief, the workers taking to the streets singing The International, and the author's smiling reflection in a shop window are the work of writer of genius. I read this slowly - savoured it - lazed about Frl. Schroeder's listening to the gossip, hoping she'd make me an omelette.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful 5.0 out of 5 stars Mr Isherwood brings the early 20th Century to you 20 November 2013 By Buddy Massey - Published on Amazon.com Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase I Love learning History by reading Diaries and Journals. Mr Isherwood was in the right places at the right time, I don't think anybody else who went through those Decades were as gifted a writer as Mr Isherwood brings those eras to light and in this gifted writer we can experience what he sees and does as if it were your own remembraces.I would also like to thank the seller and Amazon.Com especially for the ease of shopping from home- I purchased this item from Amazon.Com(s) Kindle Library and especially like receiving my books in seconds and you can't beat the Kindle Prices

Question: The film musical, "Cabaret" was based on the short novel, "Goodbye to Berlin", written in the 1930's by which British author?
Answer: CHRISTOPHER ISHERWOOD