Second up I'll go with
Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood. I've always loved the film Cabaret (even though I'm generally not big on musicals) and how darkly and, paradoxically, colourfully evocative it is of such a specific and unique place, time and social set. This is the work that it and other adaptations, including the 1950s play and film I Am a Camera, are based on.
Goodreads,
Preview, 218 pages, 1939, England, U.S. & Germany
Quote:
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.
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