Goodbye to Berlin Portrait Surprised Young Asian Woman Short Stock Photo 2104767638. 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 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. Brilliant sketches of a society in decay George Orwell Isherwood is a master of the emotionally cathartic moment, funny and perspicacious Evening Standard