Prater Violet

A "masterly novella" from the author of Goodbye to Berlin—the inspiration for Cabaret—"one of the great prose writers of the twentieth century" (Philip French, The Observer).

Prater Violet concerns the filming of an unashamedly romantic and commercial musical about old Vienna. It is a stinging satirical novel about the film industry, trifling studio feuds, and the fatuous movie Prater Violet, which, ironically, counterpoints the tragic events on the world stage as Hitler's lengthening shadow falls over the real Vienna of the thirties. At its center are vivid portraits of the mocking genius Friedrich Bergmann, the imperious, dazzlingly witty Austrian director, and his disciple, a genial young screenwriter—the fictionalized Christopher Isherwood.

When it first appeared in 1945, Prater Violet caused a fury of critical speculation and acclaim. Edmund Wilson called it "a deliberate historical parable," and Diana Trilling's Nation review said, "Prater Violet is the most charming novel I have read in a long time . . . It is a book written in the author's own person, yet utterly without ego; it is a novel about movie writers which is yet a novel about the life of every serious artist; it is a book without a political moral, but a profound moral-political statement; it is gay, witty, sophisticated, but wholly responsible."

"Prater Violet, in my view, is one of the best short novels in English written in this century." ―Stanley Kauffman, The New Republic

"Prater Violet resembles the episodes in Goodbye to Berlin and keeps up the same high level of excellence." ―Edmund Wilson, The New Yorker