Books

First edition, first impression, of Isherwood's sardonic tragicomedy, which draws from his own experiences in Berlin during the rise of Nazism. Cyril Connolly chose it as one of his 100 key books for The Modern Movement. Goodbye to Berlin was originally planned as a much longer episodic novel of pre-Hitler Berlin called "The Lost" but remained a collection of six connected narratives. It reprises familiar characters from Mr. Norris Changes Trains, and the chapter "Sally Bowles" formed the basis for Kander and Ebb's 1966 musical Cabaret. Octavo. Original grey cloth, spine lettered in red, top edge red. With dust jacket, designed by Humphrey Spender. Booksellers ticket of Hatchards on front pastedown. Spine toned, slight foxing to cloth and endmatter, inner hinges just starting; jacket unclipped, edges chipped with a few short closed tears, rear panel faintly soiled: a very good copy in like jacket. Connolly The Modern Movement 86; Woolmer 451.

Sally Bowles is a novella by Christopher Isherwood, originally published in 1937 as part of the novel 'Goodbye to Berlin,' which is part of The Berlin Stories collection. The character of Sally Bowles, a young English singer in Berlin's Weimar Republic, became iconic, especially after the novella's adaptation into the musical 'Cabaret.'