The Berlin Stories

First published in the 1930s, The Berlin Stories contains two astonishing related novels, The Last of Mr. Norris and Goodbye to Berlin,which are recognized today as classics of modern fiction. Isherwoodmagnificently captures 1931 Berlin: charming, with its avenues andcafAcs; marvelously grotesque, with its nightlife and dreamers;dangerous, with its vice and intrigue; powerful and seedy, with itsmobs and millionaires--this is the period when Hitler was beginning hismove to power. The Berlin Stories is inhabited by a wealth ofcharacters: the unforgettable Sally Bowles, whose misadventures in thedemimonde were popularized on the American stage and screen by JulieHarris in I Am A Camera and Liza Minnelli in Cabaret;Mr. Norris, the improbable old debauchee mysteriously caught betweenthe Nazis and the Communists; plump FrAulein Schroeder, who thinks anoperation to reduce the scale of her BA?ste might relieve her heartpalpitations; and the distinguished and doomed Jewish family, theLandauers.