Mr Norris changes trains
- 240 pages
- 9 hours of reading
This book portrays a series of encounters in Berlin in the early thirties between the narrator, William Bradshaw, and Mr.Norris.
The Berlin Novels Series
This series transports readers to the tumultuous streets of pre-war Berlin, capturing its vibrant yet precarious atmosphere. It follows the experiences of an outsider navigating a world of eccentric characters and bohemian decadence. Through witty observations and sharp prose, the novels portray a society teetering on the brink of immense change and danger. These stories offer a compelling glimpse into a city and an era shadowed by an impending political storm.
Recommended Reading Order
- 1
- 2
Goodbye to Berlin
- 208 pages
- 8 hours of reading
Here, meine Damen und Herren, is Chrisopther Isherwood's brilliant farewell to a city which was not only buildings, streets, and people, but was also a state of mind which will never come around again. In linked short stories, he says goodbye to Sally Bowles, to Fraulein Schroeder, to pranksters, perverts, political manipulators; to the very, very guilty and to the dwindling band of innocents. It is goodbye to a Berlin wild, wicked, breathtaking, decadent beyond belief and already - in the years between the wars - welcoming death in through the door, though more with a wink than a whimper. ~from the back cover
Related books
The Berlin novels
- 512 pages
- 18 hours of reading
Includes Mr Norris Changes Trains and Goodbye to Berlin , the inspiration for the stage and screen musical Cabaret . It is a haunting evocation of the gathering storm of the Nazi terror and a portrait of Bohemian Berlin - a city and a world on the very brink of ruin.
New Directions - 134: The Berlin Stories
- 401 pages
- 15 hours of reading
First published in 1935 and 1939, the two related novels, The Last of Mr. Norris and Goodbye to Berlin, which make up The Berlin Stories are recognized today as classics of modern fiction.A charming city of avenues and cafés, a grotesque city of night-people and fantasts, a dangerous city of vice and intrigue, a powerful city of millionaires and mobs - all this was Berlin in 1931, the period when Hitler was beginning his move to power.Here are Mr. Norris, the improbable old debauchee mysteriously caught in the struggle between Nazis and Communists; plump Fräulein Schroeder, who thinks an operation to reduce the scale of her Büste might relieve her heart palpitations; the Landauers, a distinguished and doomed Jewish family; Sally Bowles, whose misadventures in the demimonde were popularized on the American stage and screen by Julie Harris in "I Am a Camera" and by Liza Minelli in "Cabaret."
