120,000+ Books, Games & Puzzles in-stock 🇳🇿

Overnight NZ-wide delivery 🚀 Auckland Bookstore • Open 7 days, 8:30am–5pm

Goodbye to Berlin

Series: Vintage Deco
3.93 goodreads logo

Ratings/reviews counts are updated frequently.

Check link for latest rating.
( 21,016 ratings, 1,988 reviews)
Book Hero Magic crafted this summary to help describe this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Summary
Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood offers a vivid portrayal of life in Weimar-era Berlin through the eyes of a British expatriate. Set against the backdrop of a city on the brink of political upheaval, the novel paints intimate portraits of its eclectic characters, capturing their struggles and desires in a rapidly changing world. With its rich atmosphere and humanistic insight, the story delves deep into the complexities of society during this turbulent period.
Read More
Format: Paperback / softback
$2400
Elsewhere:
$2600
OVERNIGHT NZ-WIDE DELIVERY

Found a better price? Request a price match

Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?

This book may appeal to you if you are intrigued by the vibrant and tumultuous atmosphere of 1930s Berlin. You might enjoy being immersed in the vivid characters and sharp social observations, capturing a city on the brink of historical change.

Book Hero thinking about your next read

Isherwood's classic story of Berlin in the 1930s - and the inspiration for Cabaret - now in a stand-alone edition.

Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

VINTAGE DECO – Nine blazing, daring novels to celebrate the 1920s – 100 years on.

Goodbye to Berlin is the novella that inspired Cabaret, evoking the glamour and sleaze, excess and repression of Berlin society. Isherwood depicts the lives of people under 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.

'I'm the type which every man imagines he wants, until he gets me; and then he finds he doesn't really, after all.'

VINTAGE DECO – Nine blazing, daring novels to celebrate the 1920s – 100 years on.

Series: Vintage Deco

View all
  • Fiesta
    VINTAGE DECO — Nine blazing, daring novels to celebrate the 1920s — 100 years on. This is a hell of dull talk...How about some of that champagne? Paris in the twenties — Pernod, parties, and expatriate Americans, loose-living on money from home. Jake is wildly in love with Brett Ashley, aristocratic and irresistibly beautiful, with an abandoned, sensuous nature that...
    Paperback
    $2400
    Elsewhere:
    $2600
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • Goodbye to Berlin
    VINTAGE DECO – Nine blazing, daring novels to celebrate the 1920s – 100 years on. Goodbye to Berlin is the novella that inspired Cabaret, evoking the glamour and sleaze, excess and repression of Berlin society. Isherwood depicts the lives of people under threat from the rise of the Nazis: a wealthy Jewish heiress, Natalia Landauer; a gay couple, Peter and...
    Paperback
    $2400
    Elsewhere:
    $2600
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • Mrs Dalloway
    VINTAGE DECO - Nine blazing, daring novels to celebrate the 1920s - 100 years on. The world wavered and quivered and threatened to burst into flames In this vivid portrait of one day in a woman's life, Clarissa Dalloway is preoccupied with the last-minute details of a party she is to give that evening. As she readies her house, she...
    Paperback
    $2400
    Elsewhere:
    $2600
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • The Enchanted April
    VINTAGE DECO - Nine blazing, daring novels to celebrate the 1920s - 100 years on. Now she had taken off her goodness and left it behind her like a heap of rain-sodden clothes, and she only felt joy. Mrs Wilkins and Mrs Arbuthnot, cowed and neglected by their husbands, make a daring plan—they will have a holiday. Leaving a drab...
    Paperback
    $2400
    Elsewhere:
    $2600
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • The Great Gatsby
    VINTAGE DECO - Nine blazing, daring novels to celebrate the 1920s - 100 years on. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars. The world and his mistress are at Jay Gatsby's party. But Gatsby stands apart from the crowd, isolated by a secret longing. In between...
    Paperback
    $2400
    Elsewhere:
    $2600
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • The Age of Innocence
    Vintage Deco: Nine blazing, daring novels to celebrate the 1920s - 100 years on. We can't behave like people in novels, though, can we? Newland Archer and May Welland are the perfect couple. He is a wealthy young lawyer, and she is a lovely and sweet-natured girl. All seems set for success until the arrival of May's unconventional cousin, Ellen...
    Paperback
    $2400
    Elsewhere:
    $2600
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • Jazz
    VINTAGE DECO - Nine blazing, daring novels to celebrate the 1920s - 100 years on. What's the world for you if you can't make it up the way you want it? Joe Trace - in his fifties, door-to-door salesman of Cleopatra beauty products, erstwhile devoted husband - shoots dead his lover of three months, the impetuous, eighteen-year-old Dorcas. At the...
    Paperback
    $2400
    Elsewhere:
    $2600
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • Save Me The Waltz
    VINTAGE DECO – Nine blazing, daring novels to celebrate the 1920s – 100 years on. 'We couldn't go on indefinitely being swept off our feet' One of the great literary curiosities of the twentieth century, Save Me the Waltz is the first and only novel by the wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald. During the years when Fitzgerald was working on...
    Paperback
    $2400
    Elsewhere:
    $2600
    In Stock
    Ships today

Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?

Christopher Isherwood's Goodbye to Berlin is praised for its unique narrative voice, seamlessly blending historical context with imaginative storytelling, which remains fresh and engaging no matter how often it is experienced. While the character of Sally Bowles gained fame through the musical adaptation Cabaret, the book itself is noted for its depth and impact surpassing that of its theatrical counterpart.

Book Hero reading reviews

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9781784878108

Publisher: Vintage Publishing

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 06 October 2022

Country: United Kingdom

Imprint: Vintage Classics

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 12.0mm

Width: 120.0mm

Height: 192.0mm

Weight: 220g

Pages: 272

About the Author

Christopher Isherwood (1904-1986) was one of the most celebrated writers of his generation. He left Cambridge without graduating, briefly studied medicine and then turned to writing his first novels, All the Conspirators and The Memorial. Between 1929 and 1939 he lived mainly abroad, spending four years in Berlin and writing the novels Mr Norris Changes Trains and Goodbye to Berlin on which the musical Cabaret was based. He moved to America in 1939, becoming a US citizen in 1946, and wrote another five novels, including Down There on a Visit and A Single Man, a travel book about South America and a biography of the Indian mystic Ramakrishna. In the late 1960s and '70s he turned to autobiographical works- Kathleen and Frank, Christopher and His Kind, My Guru and His Disciple and October, one month of his diary with drawings by Don Bachardy.

Also by Christopher Isherwood

View all
  • A Single Man
    A Single Man is an exclusive Vintage Classic that has been made into a film starring Julianne Moore and Colin Firth, directed by Tom Ford. Isherwood's short, poignant novel is a tender and wistful love story. Celebrated as a masterpiece from its first publication, A Single Man is the story of George, an English professor in suburban California left heartbroken...
    Paperback
    $2400
    Elsewhere:
    $2600
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • Goodbye to Berlin
    The best prose writer in English - Gore Vidal As Cabaret returns to the West End, revisit the KitKat Club in the book that introduced Sally Bowles to the world. Set in the 1930s, Goodbye to Berlin is the novella that inspired Cabaret, evoking the glamour and sleaze, excess and repression of Berlin society. Isherwood shows the lives of people...
    Paperback
    $2400
    Elsewhere:
    $2600
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • The Berlin Novels
    Two acclaimed novels based on Isherwood's experiences in pre-war Berlin, together in one volume. Christopher Isherwood offers fascinating insight into pre-war Berlin. Mr Norris Changes Trains The first of Christopher Isherwood's classic Berlin novels, this portrays the encounter and growing friendship between young William Bradshaw and the urbane and mildly sinister Mr Norris. Piquant, witty and oblique, it vividly evokes...
    Paperback
    $3200
    Elsewhere:
    $3500
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • Lost Years
    His writing soon becomes addictive as one self-disclosure follows another. What better recommendation for a diary could there be? - The Times Christopher Isherwood settled in California in 1939 and spent the war years writing for Hollywood. By 1945, however, he had all but ceased to write fiction and even abandoned his habit of keeping a diary. Instead, he embarked...
    Paperback
    $5000
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • Isherwood on Writing
    Isherwood's lectures on writing and writers, now all available for the first time In the 1960s, Christopher Isherwood gave an unprecedented series of lectures at California universities about his life and work. During this time, Isherwood, who would liberate the memoir and become the founding father of modern gay writing, spoke openly for the first time about his craft—on writing...
    Paperback
    $5799
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks
  • A Meeting by the River
    A deeply satisfying novel of sibling rivalry, sexuality and spirituality. Breaking a long silence, Oliver, a young Englishman, writes to his elder brother, Patrick. Oliver, the idealistic younger brother, is living in a Hindu Monastery and has decided to take his final monastic vows. Patrick, a successful, long-married publisher, newly in love with a boy in Los Angeles, decides to...
    Paperback
    $2800
    Elsewhere:
    $2999
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks
  • Sally Bowles
    Pre-order
    Sally Bowles
    Relish a BRIEF ENCOUNTER with Christopher Isherwood, the master chronicler of 1930s Berlin, with this dazzling tale of glamour and decadence, poverty and ambition. Sally Bowles is the dazzling centrepiece of Goodbye to Berlin, distilling Isherwood's genius into the tale of one bawdy, brilliant woman. 1930s Berlin is a realm of glamour and sleaze, repression and excess, threatened by a...
    Paperback
    $2400
    Pre-order
    Out 20 Oct 2026
  • Kathleen and Frank
    First published in 1971, this is a key book in Isherwood's career revealing as much about him as the parents he set out to portray. This is the story of Christopher Isherwood's parents - their meeting in 1895, marriage in 1903 after his father had returned from the Boer War, and his father's death in an assault on Ypres in...
    Paperback
    $4500
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • All the Conspirators
    All the Conspirators by Christopher Isherwood is his debut novel, featuring the first generation of Angry Young Men. The scene is 1920s Kensington, where Philip and Joan are testing the very limits of politeness and restraint as they fight to expunge the oppression of their mother—by whatever means necessary. In his first novel, Christopher Isherwood paints an intimate portrait of...
    Paperback
    Sold Out
  • A Single Man
    A Single Man is an exclusive Vintage Classic that has been made into a film starring Julianne Moore and Colin Firth and directed by Tom Ford. In this brilliantly perceptive novel, a middle-aged professor living in California is alienated from his students by differences in age and nationality, and from the rest of society by his homosexuality. Isherwood explores the...
    Paperback
    Sold Out

More from General Fiction

View all
  • Yesteryear
    A BOLD AND BITING SATIRE. WILL HAVE YOU GASPING TO THE FINAL PAGE — Nita Prose WICKEDLY FUNNY, BEAUTIFULLY WRITTEN AND FRIGHTENINGLY PERCEPTIVE — Abigail Dean INVENTIVE, ADDICTIVE, A WILD RIDE — Ashley Audrain SHOT THROUGH WITH HUMOUR AND LACED WITH DARKNESS — Clare Mackintosh The Stepford Wives meets The Handmaid's Tale — Hannah Deitch My name was Natalie Heller...
    Paperback
    $2999
    Elsewhere:
    $3699
    (3)
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • Theo of Golden
    THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLING PHENOMENON'For anything to be truly good, there must be love in it. Nothing is what it's supposed to be if love is not at the core.' One morning, a stranger arrives in the town of Golden. No one knows who he is or where he came from…His name is Theo and he's arrived there by chance –...
    Paperback
    $2899
    Elsewhere:
    $3499
    (6)
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • The Wedding People
    'BEST READ OF THE YEAR SO FAR' THE TIMES 'BOOKS AS FUN AS THIS ONE ARE FEW AND FAR BETWEEN' GUARDIAN Phoebe Stone arrives at a grand beachside hotel in Rhode Island wearing her best dress and least comfortable shoes. Immediately she is mistaken for one of the wedding people — but she's actually the only guest at the Cornwall...
    Paperback
    $2399
    Elsewhere:
    $2799
    (3)
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • A Court of Thorns and Roses Paperback Box Set (5 books)
    All five of the Court of Thorns and Roses paperbacks packaged together in a gorgeous box set. "Passionate, violent, sexy and daring." —USA TODAY on A Court of Thorns and Roses Feyre is a huntress. The skin of a wolf would bring enough gold to feed her sisters for a month. But the life of a magical creature comes at...
    Set
    $9999
    Elsewhere:
    $12495
    (4)
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • A Court of Mist and Fury
    A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas continues Feyre Archeron's epic journey in the world of the High Fae. Having survived the brutal trials under the Mountain, Feyre returns to the Spring Court. Though she now possesses the immortal powers of the High Fae, the traumatic experiences have left scars on her human heart. Haunted by the...
    Paperback
    $2100
    Elsewhere:
    $2299
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • A Court of Thorns and Roses
    The first instalment of the GLOBAL PHENOMENON and TikTok sensation, from multi-million selling and #1 Sunday Times bestselling author Sarah J. Maas. Maas has established herself as a fantasy fiction titan – Time Harry Potter magic, Taylor Swift sass, Fifty Shades-level athleticism – The Sunday Times With bits of Buffy, Game of Thrones and Outlander, this is a glorious series...
    Paperback
    $2100
    Elsewhere:
    $2299
    (2)
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • A Court of Wings and Ruin
    The third instalment of the GLOBAL PHENOMENON, romantic fantasy epic and TikTok sensation, ACOTAR. From multi-million and #1 Sunday Times bestselling author Sarah J. Maas. In A Court of Wings and Ruin, the gripping third book of the ACOTAR series, Feyre Archeron faces the ultimate battle for her world. Having returned to the Spring Court, she is determined to gather...
    Paperback
    $2100
    Elsewhere:
    $2299
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • A Court of Frost and Starlight
    In A Court of Frost and Starlight by Sarah J. Maas, readers are invited to revisit the enchanting world of Prythian in a heartwarming and introspective narrative. Set against the backdrop of the Winter Solstice, Feyre Archeron and her mate Rhysand return to centre stage as they strive to restore the Night Court after the devastating conflicts of A Court...
    Paperback
    $2100
    Elsewhere:
    $2299
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • A Court of Frost and Starlight - Night Court Edition
    Limited Edition
    A Court of Frost and Starlight - Night Court Edition
    The magic and beauty of the Night Court is captured in these LIMITED EDITIONS of the Court of Thorns and Roses series! This Night Court Edition features the Night Court symbol on a striking black and silver foiled cover and includes black sprayed edges. An unmissable companion tale to the GLOBAL PHENOMENON, romantic fantasy epic and TikTok sensation, ACOTAR. From...
    Paperback
    $2300
    Elsewhere:
    $2799
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • A Court of Silver Flames - Night Court Edition
    Limited Edition
    A Court of Silver Flames - Night Court Edition
    The magic and beauty of the Night Court is captured in these LIMITED EDITIONS of the Court of Thorns and Roses series! This Night Court Edition features the Night Court symbol on a striking black and silver foiled cover and includes black sprayed edges. The latest instalment of the GLOBAL PHENOMENON, romantic fantasy epic and TikTok sensation, ACOTAR. From multi-million...
    Paperback
    $2500
    Elsewhere:
    $2799
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • A Court of Silver Flames
    The latest instalment of the GLOBAL PHENOMENON, romantic fantasy epic and TikTok sensation, ACOTAR. From multi-million and #1 Sunday Times bestselling author Sarah J. Maas. Maas has established herself as a fantasy fiction titan - Time Think Game of Thrones meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer with a drizzle of E.L. James – Telegraph Spiced with slick plotting and atmospheric world-building...
    Paperback
    $2100
    Elsewhere:
    $2499
    (1)
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • A Court of Wings and Ruin - Night Court Edition
    Limited Edition
    A Court of Wings and Ruin - Night Court Edition
    The magic and beauty of the Night Court is captured in these LIMITED EDITIONS of the Court of Thorns and Roses series! This Night Court Edition features the Night Court symbol on a striking black and silver foiled cover and includes black sprayed edges. The third installment of the GLOBAL PHENOMENON, romantic fantasy epic and TikTok sensation, ACOTAR. From multi-million...
    Paperback
    $2400
    Elsewhere:
    $2799
    In Stock
    Ships today

Why buy from us?

Book Hero is not a chain store or big box retailer. We're an independent 100% NZ-owned business on a mission to help more Kiwis rediscover a love of books and reading!

Service & Delivery

Service & Delivery

Our warehouse in Auckland holds over 100,000 books, toys, board games and puzzles in-stock so you're not waiting for your order to arrive from overseas.

Auckland Bookstore

Auckland Bookstore

We're primarily an online store, but for your convenience you can pick up your order for free from our bookstore, which is right next door to our warehouse in Hobsonville.

Our Gifting Service

Our Gifting Service

Books make wonderful thoughtful gifts and we're here to help with gift-wrapping and cards. We can even send your gift directly to your loved one.

General Fiction lists from the team

Explore our curated lists from our heroes to find your next read!