Debate

»Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin years«

Literaturhaus Berlin
Begleitprogramm zur Ausstellung »Happy in Berlin?« Digital
Stefano Evangelista in conversation with Katherine Bucknell

Looking back on his time in Berlin, Christopher Isherwood memorably wrote that, to his young self, ›Berlin meant Boys‹. Sexual curiosity was certainly part of what drove the English novelist to Berlin. But to Isherwood, Berlin also meant political awakening, cinema, cabaret, professional contacts, friendships, and much more. Isherwood’s experiences in Berlin in the early 1930s completely changed his personal and professional life. He evoked some of them in Mr Norris changes Trains (1935) and Goodbye to Berlin (1939), two novels that have created a mythic image of interwar Berlin. Years later, Isherwood destroyed the diary he kept in Berlin. Why? What do we really know about Isherwood’s time in Berlin?

Questions like these will be discussed by the two Isherwood experts Katherine Bucknell and Stefano Evangelista on our digital stage.