Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood

Meeting at the usual place, The Shakespeare Hotel, 200 Devonshire Street, Surry Hills, at 7.00pm on Thursday 12 Feburary 2026, we will be discussing Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood.

It is a semi-autobiographical novel set in 1930s Berlin, portraying the city’s poverty, decadence, and political unrest through bars, cabarets, and boarding houses, where queer and gender-nonconforming people lived and socialised. Meanwhile, the Nazis rose to power.

The novel inspired the musical Cabaret and its 1972 film adaptation starring Liza Minnelli.

Contact dalemills (at) cantab.net for a free pdf or Kindle-compatible file.

The Shakespeare Hotel is a busy inner-city pub, but we meet in a semi-private room upstairs, conducive for discussion. Many of us arrive around 6.00pm for drinks or food, and the meeting starts at 7.00pm. The format is that we have a focused discussion on the book till about 8.00pm, and then the meeting formally closes. Almost everyone stays back to further chat about the book or anything else.

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