Set in the 1930s,Goodbye to Berlinevokes the glamour and sleaze, excess and repression of Berlin society. Isherwood shows the lives of people at threat from the rise of the Nazis: a wealthy Jewish heiress, Natalia Landauer, a gay couple, Peter and Otto, and an English upper-class waif, the divinely decadent Sally Bowles.

Christopher Isherwood was born in 1904 and moved to America where he took up formal citizenship in 1946. His many famous works includeMr Norris Changes TrainsandGoodbye to Berlin.

'The best prose writer in English' Gore Vidal