The Berlin Stories: The Last of Mr. Norris/Goodbye to Berlin (New Directions Books)

TIME's 100 Greatest Novels: 1923 -- Present (100 books items)

"'"I am a camera with its shutter open." There is something unmistakably 20th Century about this, the opening line to Goodbye to Berlin. In their coolness and clarity and melancholy detachment these words express more about a moment in time than most entire novels do. Berlin Stories is not quite a novel; it's actually two short ones stuck together, The Last of Mr. Norris and Goodbye to Berlin. But they form one coherent snapshot of a lost world, the antic, cosmopolitan Berlin of the 1930's, where"

Time's 100 Best English Novels (100 books items)

""I am a camera with its shutter open." There is something unmistakably 20th Century about this, the opening line to Goodbye to Berlin. In their coolness and clarity and melancholy detachment these words express more about a moment in time than most entire novels do. Berlin Stories is not quite a novel; it's actually two short ones stuck together, The Last of Mr. Norris and Goodbye to Berlin. But they form one coherent snapshot of a lost world, the antic, cosmopolitan Berlin of the 1930's, where "

[Book] The Berlin Stories

“"I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking."

The Berlin Stories consists of two semi-biographical novels first published in 1935 and 1939 respectively. Goodbye to Berlin is a collection of short stories, consisting of the anecdotes from the writer's experiences in Berlin in the early 1930s during Hitler's rise to power. Written in the same time period, The Last of Mr. Norris resembles more like a novel but is still episodic in its storytelling. Although historically relevant in their time and place, Isherwood's stories concern mostly about the individuals he'd met in the city of Berlin and how the political atmosphere has affected them. What makes The Berlin Stories a good read is Isherwood's characters; they are eccentric and lively, not necess” read more