 The cover of the first edition | |
| Author | Christopher Isherwood |
|---|---|
| Genre | Tragedy |
| Published | 1939 |
| Publisher | Hogarth Press |
| Publication place | United Kingdom |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 317 |
| OCLC | 5437385 |
| Preceded by | Mr Norris Changes Trains (1935) |
Goodbye to Berlin is a 1939 novel by Anglo-American writer Christopher Isherwood set during the waning days of the Weimar Republic. The novel recounts Isherwood's 1929–1932 sojourn as a pleasure-seeking British expatriate on the eve of Adolf Hitler's ascension as Chancellor of Germany and consists of a "series of sketches of disintegrating Berlin, its slums and nightclubs and comfortable villas, its odd maladapted types and its complacent burghers."[1] The plot was based on factual events in Isherwood's life, and the novel's characters were based upon actual persons.[2] The insouciant flapper Sally Bowles was based on teenage cabaret singer Jean Ross who became Isherwood's friend during his sojourn.
During Isherwood's time abroad in Germany, the young author witnessed extreme "poverty, unemployment, political demonstrations and street fighting between the forces of the extreme left and the extreme right."[3][4] Following the Enabling Act which cemented Hitler's power in March 1933, Isherwood fled Germany and returned to England.[5] Afterwards, the Nazis shuttered Berlin's cabarets,[a] and many of Isherwood's friends fled abroad or perished in concentration camps.[6] These events served as the genesis for Isherwood's stories.
The novel received positive reviews from critics and contemporary writers.[7] Anne Margaret Angus praised Isherwood's mastery in conveying the despair of Berlin's denizens and "their hopeless clinging to the pleasures of the moment".[8] She believed Isherwood skillfully evoked "the psychological and emotional hotbed which forced the growth of that incredible tree, 'national socialism'."[8] George Orwell hailed the novel for its "brilliant sketches of a society in decay".[9] "Reading such tales as this," Orwell wrote, "the thing that surprises one is not that Hitler came to power, but that he did not do so several years earlier."[9]
The 1939 novel was republished together with Isherwood's 1935 novel, Mr Norris Changes Trains, in a 1945 collection titled The Berlin Stories. Critics praised the collection as capturing the bleak nihilism of the Weimar period.[10] In 2010, Time magazine hailed the collection as one of the 100 Best English-language novels of the 20th century.[10] Goodbye to Berlin was adapted into the 1951 Broadway play I Am a Camera, the 1966 musical Cabaret, and the 1972 film of the same name. According to critics, the novel's character Sally Bowles inspired Truman Capote's character Holly Golightly in his 1958 novella Breakfast at Tiffany's.[11][12]
- ^ Daily Herald 1939, p. 8.
- ^ Doyle 2013.
- ^ Spender 1977.
- ^ Spender 1966, p. 129; Parker 2005, p. 254.
- ^ Parker 2005, p. 221.
- ^ Isherwood 1976, pp. 164–166; Farina 2013, p. 74–81.
- ^ Hartley 1939, p. 7; Angus 1939, p. 52; Orwell 1998, p. 237.
- ^ a b Angus 1939, p. 52.
- ^ a b Orwell 1998, p. 237.
- ^ a b Grossman 2010.
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
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