Bought this and two other Isherwood books in a set from The Bookpeople in their summer sale - it was working out as about 50p a book and I couldn't resist.

It's so nice to pick up a book, not really knowing what it will be like or what it's about, and discover a well-written, fantastic little story.

Set in Berlin in the 1930s on the run up to the second world war, this is really a book about a "friendship" between Mr Arthur Norris, a middle-aged German and a twenty something Englishman called William Bradshaw. They get to know each other by chance on a train journey, and for the following two years they strike up a friendship of a sorts, Bradshaw increasingly getting drawn into Norris' world.

Norris has refined tastes which he usually can't afford, is a bit of a sensitive old diva, with his wig, powder puff and fussy toilet every morning. You never really quite work out what he does for work a lot of the time, but it does become clear that he is two-faced, deceitful and uses everyone he knows sooner or later to his own financial advantage. The thing is, he is so self-involved and self-pitying that he truely believes his own self-publicity and to the very end doesn't understand what he has done wrong. His ex-secretary, who seems to be just as bad as he is, ends up blackmailing and persuing him all over the world. Rather just desserts I feel, that he ends up living with this punishment for the rest of his days.

There's also something of Berlin with the lead up to the war in this tale, Norris and Bradshaw socialising with some of the communists; seeing the Nazi power and presence built up and grow in strength.