Mention Books Supposing Goodbye to Berlin (The Berlin Novels #2)
Original Title: | Goodbye to Berlin |
ISBN: | 0586047956 (ISBN13: 9780586047958) |
Edition Language: | English |
Series: | The Berlin Novels #2 |
Setting: | Berlin,1930(Germany) RĂ¼gen,1931(Germany) |
Christopher Isherwood
Mass Market Paperback | Pages: 208 pages Rating: 3.94 | 9158 Users | 692 Reviews
Define Containing Books Goodbye to Berlin (The Berlin Novels #2)
Title | : | Goodbye to Berlin (The Berlin Novels #2) |
Author | : | Christopher Isherwood |
Book Format | : | Mass Market Paperback |
Book Edition | : | UK / Ireland / AUS / NZ |
Pages | : | Pages: 208 pages |
Published | : | 1977 by Triad Panther (first published 1939) |
Categories | : | Fiction. Classics. Short Stories. Cultural. Germany |
Interpretation To Books Goodbye to Berlin (The Berlin Novels #2)
Here, meine Damen und Herren, is Chrisopther Isherwood's brilliant farewell to a city which was not only buildings, streets, and people, but was also a state of mind which will never come around again.In linked short stories, he says goodbye to Sally Bowles, to Fraulein Schroeder, to pranksters, perverts, political manipulators; to the very, very guilty and to the dwindling band of innocents. It is goodbye to a Berlin wild, wicked, breathtaking, decadent beyond belief and already - in the years between the wars - welcoming death in through the door, though more with a wink than a whimper.
~from the back cover
Rating Containing Books Goodbye to Berlin (The Berlin Novels #2)
Ratings: 3.94 From 9158 Users | 692 ReviewsJudgment Containing Books Goodbye to Berlin (The Berlin Novels #2)
Although I had not read any of his works, I always had a prejudice against Christopher Isherwood. I placed him amongst the British writers who played at being communist in the 1930s, but then resorted to their class background during the Cold War and became pillars of the establishment. Maybe they were serious writers, but they were dilettantes at life. I read Goodbye to Berlin because it was on the shelves of the house I stayed in while on holiday and I found that I enjoyed it. Isherwood had"It is strange how people seem to belong to places especially to places where they were not born..."Christopher Isherwood brings us fragments of his time in lost Berlin. The odd, bewildered people that he met along the way, the friends who somehow naturally dissolved in and out of each page, the magnitude of the city as it moved within them as their stories unfolded. Sally Bowles was my favourite, Capote's Holly Golightly couldn't even touch her. The book is divided into sections that give a
Goodbye to Berlin indeed!, at least as it was, and the rest of Europe for that matter, as storm is growing within the German establishment, a storm that will go on to wreak havoc across the land and neighboring Poland as Hilter sets in motion the beginning of the darkest time for humanity in the twentieth century. Originally planned as a huge novel titled "The Lost" covering the years of pre-Hitler Berlin, but was deemed to grandiose for the short stories and diaries written during this time,
Whilst in Berlin recently we went to see Cabaret in German in a spiegeltent. Splendid. Naturally I was looking forward to reading about the very same Sally Bowles in this book, but it turns out that Sally Bowles is a complete English Arse. Utterly unbearable. I think it would be fair to say she's been thoroughly fixed up for the musical and bravo for that decision. Certainly this book improves on the pages in which she is not to be found. There is much to separate this book from Kästner's Going
I believe at one point this novel was going to be called Miserable Mopey English Sod has Absolutely No Fun in Berlin which would have left the reader in no doubt. I am not so silly as to have expected "Two Ladies" or "The Gorilla Song" in Goodbye to Berlin, as I have discovered since I read Oliver Twist that sometimes they make up songs and add them randomly into the story when they film these books. But I did expect to be reading about Sally Bowles and her exploits at the Kit Kat Club after
2.5 stars rounded up to 3This novel, which is more like short stories (but it's called a novel where I read about it) is based on Isherwood's years in Berlin (he was there from 1929-1933) and people he knew. I liked part of this and didn't like other parts, but there is no question that he had strong writing abilities. I found this sad and at times rather tragic, which is in part due to the times this is set (the Nazis rise to power happened during this time) and in part to the lives of some of
This was not quite what I expected and I wish I had ended up liking it more than I did. The famous sentence from the first page is I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking". Christopher Isherwood created the novel out of his diaries he kept in Berlin in the early 1930s. Towards the end, Hitler was rising, the city gradually changing and the writer decided to leave Berlin for good. This is the section I really liked. The rest, excepting the character of Sally
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