The Berlin Novels

Isherwood's two semi-autobiographical Berlin novels are here collected in an omnibus edition and they are a fascinating, at times brilliant read.

In the introduction to Berlin Stories, Isherwood states that his original idea was for a long, episodic novel about life in Berlin, but this was abandoned and he ended up writing two books, the aforementioned Berlin Stories and Mr Norris Changes Trains. So, firstly, Mr Norris - this kind of pales in comparison to Berlin Stories. Norris is an unlikeable character, a conman, a vain shyster with some unusual tastes, into who's orbit comes Bradshaw, a young English teacher living in Berlin (Isherwood by another name). It's a slow paced, episodic novel where Norris constantly gets himself into financial difficulties, runs away and reappears months later with some new scheme. All this happens during the dying days of the Weimar Republic, with Nazism simmering away in the background, infecting life in Berlin like a noxious smell. It's well written, but didn't really hold my attention.

Berlin Stories, upon which the movie Cabaret was based, is quite superb. Essentially a diary in novel form, it covers the years 1930-1932/3 as Isherwood encounters a whole host of characters, German, Jewish, English, as he lives the life of an English tutor in Berlin. Superbly written snapshots of a nation's descent into madness, Isherwood captures a schizophrenic city torn between Fascism, Communism and hedonism. Here the episodic quality works well and the novel could also be seen as inter-linked short stories. It is head and shoulders above Mr Norris Changes Trains and is an essential novel of the inter-war years.