by Christopher Isherwood

Christopher Isherwood (1904-86) was born in High Lane, Cheshire, England. In 1929 he went to Berlin, where, like his novel’s narrator, he remained for four years. This period saw the curtain come down on Germany’s first parliamentary democracy, the Weimar Republic, when the constitution and the political culture proved unable to withstand the continual attacks from both the Nazi Party with its uniformed cohorts on the right of the political spectrum and the communists on the left. Isherwood experienced Berlin during a period of political tension and violence that was, at the same time, a period of cultural experimentation and artistic energy. He published two novels based on his experiences, The Last of Mr. Norris (1935) and Goodbye to Berlin (1939). Adapted to the stage in the postwar years, the latter became the 1951 Broadway play I Am a Camera. The Broadway play...