Goodbye to Berlin

Goodbye to Berlin is a 1939 novel by Anglo-American writer Christopher Isherwood set during the waning days of the Weimar Republic. The work has been cited by literary critics as deftly capturing the bleak nihilism of the Weimar period. It was adapted into the 1951 Broadway play I Am a Camera by John Van Druten and, later, the 1966 Cabaret musical and the 1972 film.
The novel recounts Isherwood’s 1929-1932 sojourn as a pleasure-seeking British expatriate in poverty-stricken Berlin during the twilight of the Jazz Age. Much of the novel’s plot details actual events, and most of the novel’s characters were based upon actual persons. The insouciant character of Sally Bowles was based on teenage cabaret singer Jean Ross. The novel was later republished together with Isherwood’s earlier novel, Mr Norris Changes Trains, in a 1945 collection entitled The Berlin Stories.