Goodbye to Berlin

De: Christopher Isherwood

Narrado por: Michael York

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

A lonely young Brit working on a novel is charmed by his landlady and her bohemian lodgers. He rooms with an English runaway and want-to-be star, the delightfully decadent Sally Bowles, and holidays on the Baltic coast with a repressed Englishman and his swaggering German lover. He is the elusive Herr Issyvoo, Mr Isherwood, Chris, Christoph, recording all in his ‘diary’, dishing on the city’s sexy, hungry nightlife, unable to look away from the violence erupting against Jews and leftists as Hitler rises to power. Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin is a sparkling city, perched on the edge of an abyss.

The novel, both cinematic and intimate, was reborn as the hit musical Cabaret. Michael York, who starred opposite Liza Minnelli in its film version, later made this acclaimed reading of the book, expressing beautifully its commingling of decadence and decline. Goodbye to Berlin is a kind of love letter, and an exhilarating farewell to a vanished world.

©1939 Christopher Isherwood (P)2013 Naxos AudioBooks UK Ltd.

Sally Bowles Stands Out

The best thing about this book is the character of Sally Bowles. She stood out in Christopher Isherwood’s collection of Berlin stories as the Nazis rose to power. She is so singularly original that I can see why she inspired the Cabaret musical and movie. The book lights up whenever she appears, and dulls when she vanishes. I kept waiting for her to reappear but all I got are chilling firsthand accounts about the old Weimar Republic Berlin dying as a darker, bloodier Hitler Berlin rose in its place. I still would definitely recommend this but return to watch the movie which is better.