Berlin Books #1: Goodbye to Berlin

(If you are interested in reading more about our wonderful city either before you come or once you’ve got home, Paul is selecting some of his favourite books about Berlin, starting with Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood)

Often packaged by the publishers as The Berlin Stories – alongside Mr Norris Changes Trains  – Goodbye to Berlin brings together a fictionalised account of different scenes during the time he lived in the city from 1929-33. If you know a bit about history, you’ll know that those four years could definitely be classed as “interesting times”, a period bookmarked by the Wall Street Crash and Hitler’s rise to power.

The political situation is ever present in the book, which explores different characters and their social circumstances through the eyes of the English narrator. Whether he’s bunking down with a working class family in Kreuzberg, or attempting to teach English to a spoiled daughter of a rich family, Isherwood paints a picture of Berlin that stands as a powerful record of a certain time and place.

The most famous character in Goodbye to Berlin is of course Sally Bowles, who was the inspiration behind the film Cabaret, and who became more famous than the book that gave birth to her. Although much of the book is light-hearted in tone, what gives it a sense of melancholy and sadness is the knowledge of what happened in Berlin after Isherwood had left. As you try to imagine the fate of the firebrand Communist and some-time homosexual Otto, the Jewish Landauer family, or even the landlady Frau Schroeder, the book suddenly gives off a sense of impending doom as all the while Hitler and his cronies intrigue in the background.

Goodbye to Berlin is a portrait of a city on the edge of disaster, a portrait of bohemians, politicos, the rich and the poor…Isherwood manages in a surprisingly small number of pages to draw them all, and draw them well.

If you are looking for a good bookshop in Berlin, with a fine selection of second hand as well as new books, and a large selection of translated German literature, check out St George’s Bookshop in Prenzlauer Berg. Otherwise, you can find Goodbye to Berlin here on Amazon.co.uk.