- Paperback: 256 pages
- Publisher: New Directions; Reissue edition (2008)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 081121804X
- ISBN-13: 978-0811218047
- Product Dimensions: 21.9 x 17 x 2.7 cm
- Shipping Weight: 458 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #190,663 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Inspiration for "Cabaret",
By
This review is from: The Berlin Stories: The Last of Mr. Norris/Goodbye to Berlin (Paperback)
Willkommen! Bien venu! Welcome! This book chronicles the experiences of a young American in pre-Nazi Germany. The changing "winds" are seen everywhere, at first subtly, then with brutal realization. Much of the story is an embellishment of true events, although the action is completely plausible and thus has all the elements of a true biography.Anyone who has had the pleasure of seeing the spellbinding stage version or the brilliant film "Cabaret" would appreciate this book as the "beginning of it all". Not much could be improved on with the stage play or the film, and this book certainly deserves equal priases. Five stars!*****
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good and Evil in the Wind,
By gobirds2 (New England) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Berlin Stories: The Last of Mr. Norris/Goodbye to Berlin (Paperback)
I donī¿t know what to make of this book. Itī¿s a bit of a bore. This is due in part to the lack of a smooth narrative flow and its inexorable amount of difficult passages the reader must drudge through. Instead of being a pleasure to read it becomes a task. The book entices you with its characters but then makes you suffer to find fruition. It is still interesting however.
5.0 out of 5 stars
The bohemia of Berlin before the Nazi menace,
By
This review is from: The Berlin Stories: The Last of Mr. Norris/Goodbye to Berlin (Paperback)
Between 1929 and 1933 Isherwood lived in Berlin and, after returning in London, he wrote the novel and the autobiographical sketches that make up this volume. Just how autobiographical these stories might be is left to the reader's imagination, of course, but they seemed to be based on German eccentrics whom the author knew and whom the reader will be unable to forget.The novel that opens the book, "The Last of Mr. Norris" (published in 1935 in England as "Mr. Norris Changes Trains"), is a somewhat comic portrayal of a bumbling, vain double agent who wears an ill-fitting wig and operates in the sleazy underworld contested by Communist idealists and Nazi thugs. The narrator, William Bradshaw, is a British expatriate tutoring English to young Germans in Berlin--someone, in other words, a lot like Isherwood himself. He encounters Norris on a train, and they initiate an often bizarre, always uneasy, on-again, off-again friendship that propels them through drunken nights in sleazy pubs and dangerous rendezvous at Swiss ski resorts. In the second half of the book, "Goodbye to Berlin" (published in 1939), Isherwood drops the alter-ego and presents himself as the narrator. Character sketches alternate with "diary entries" and feature an overlapping cast, and some of the minor figures from "Mr. Norris" make important cameos. The most famous story is "Sally Bowles," which later became John Van Druten's play "I Am a Camera" and inspired the musical "Cabaret." Equally notable, however, is the homoerotic "On Ruegen Island (Summer 1931)," which recounts Isherwood living in a lakeside cabin with the effete, insecure Peter and the athletic, sexually ambivalent Otto, whose Nordic beauty seems transmigrated from an Aryan Youth poster. Otto appears again in a subsequent section called "The Nowaks," about Isherwood's schizophrenic life while sharing a crowded attic apartment with Otto's dysfunctional family. The final sketch, "The Landauers," concerns Bernhard, the presumed heir of a wealthy Jewish family who operate a Berlin department store. Bernhard's airy cynicism and adopted Eastern spiritualism thwart his business sense and ill-prepare him for the political dangers overtaking the country. Both "Mr. Norris" and "Goodbye to Berlin" share a comic esprit eventually overwhelmed by the gravity of the Nazi menace. Together, these stories are an ode to the carefree bohemians, flappers, intellectuals, and misfits who enlivened Berlin before they were swept away by Hitler and his bullying monsters.
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