A curiosity of propaganda by a sad little poof (who may not have been English) 25 Sept 2013** This review was removed by Amazon in the USA! **
First published February 1935
Second Impression March 1935
New edition June 1937
It's quite interesting to read this curiosity, clearly written as a propagandist 1930s thing, and published by Hogarth Press, of Bloomsbury.
One of the reviews or blurbs here (on Amazon) described this as about 'pre-war Berlin' - probably whoever scribbled that hadn't heard of the 'Great War' or 'First World War' as it would soon be renamed.
The whole thing is not credible, and I have to wonder whether Isherwood spent any time in Germany at all; the descriptions are so utterly devoid of anything characteristic of Germany that one has to wonder if in fact the whole thing was made up, with a bit of guidebook backing. I can't remember, for example, a single street or building being named; and the German language extracts are exiguous and barely exist.
And it's amusing to see from these Amazon reviews how Americans in particular, doped by their Jewish controllers, think in terms of films rather than facts.
Thus Isherwood presumably liked anal sex (there's a school reference suggesting this). And, therefore, Germans were decadent! Mr Norris is shown as a violence fetishist; this of course means that Germans are fetishists! Isherwood's narrator presents himself as a neutral observer; in fact, after naval blockades during which many Germans starved, it's unlikely they would be as well-disposed to him as this novel suggests. (He's put forward as a teacher of English, with German pupils, but with nothing to suggest this was in any way genuine).
For some reason many reviewers think the descriptive writing is excellent; in fact it's rather laughable, and mainly concerned with people's faces; Norris is described in rather painful detail, mostly in conflicting ways as the book drags on. However he does just manage to emerge from one dimension into one and a bit. He has zero plausibility: a man with an inheritance, which he squandered, and which Isherwood is careful not to trace to any roots, with obvious character and money problems, completely ignorant of any ideology, is not credible as a spy; the plot in fact can only be held together by withholding essential evidence.
Isherwood's grasp of the politics (this was a time when Stalin's murder machine, funded and run by Jews, was building arms factories, tanks, and so on, preparing to invade Europe) is infantile. It's conceivable that Jews might have decided to change sides; if, for example, Germany in the First World War had offered to guarantee Palestine. But of course there's nothing in this book of possible twists of history.