With one impatient phone call, a young Christopher Isherwood is drawn into the film industry.

On the other end of the line is temperamental Austrian director Friedrich Bergmann. Christophers job is to rescue the script of an idiotic love story set in nineteenth-century Vienna, a film calledPrater Violet. Meanwhile, in the real Vienna of 1934, the Austrian right crushes a socialist uprising. Bergmann is distraught; his prophecy of a coming war goes unheeded. As tensions on set grow, studio intrigues and competing egos threaten to derail the whole project, and Hitlers shadow lengthens over Europe.

A masterly novellaGuardian

A deliberate historical parable.Prater Violetresembles episodes inGoodbye to Berlinand keeps up the same high level of excellenceNew Yorker