Why a Booktrail?
1930s: A fictionalized account of Berlin and Hitler’s rise to power is still thrilling and makes you feel you’re witnessing history.
Goodbye to Berlin
What you need to know before your trail
This is the book that we were surprised to find out was the one which inspired the movie Cabaret.
Just don’t go expecting the story you see on stage or screen though – but what you will find are many accounts of pre-war Berlin from various view points.
The novel is in fact a series of small stories, which when interwoven with each other but which also are standalones in their own right.
Locations
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These are stories of an oppressive Berlin and a country increasingly obsessed with the threat of Nazism and the changes it was undergoing in the 1930s.
Although fiction, it does read as an account of the changes that took place, and the various people that would have lived in the Germany at that time.
Since it inspired “Cabaret”- the book reads like an sumptuous snapshot of pre-war Berlin. Several characters at various times enter stage left, each chapter a set piece of sorts showcasing the various sides to the city and its people.
Nazism is growing and everyone reacts to its threat in differing ways. Life however must somehow go on. False hope and false rumours circulate casting a shadow over the country as war beckons. The country is changing but no one really knows how or what consequences it will have.
A look at the war from inside Germany.
Walk around the area where the rich people of the novel live – The Grunewald, or the Brandenburg district where Herr Noeske’s parents live and see the Germany that Christopher Isherwood wants to show you.
Where Next?
