Berlin on the eve of the Second World War: The young Englishman William Bradshaw spends his days giving English lessons to bourgeois ladies, but at night he surrounds himself with figures from the underworld. He is particularly struck by his encounter with Arthur Norris, a bon vivant and communist - a stance that is increasingly risky in Germany during those days. And then the Reichstag is in flames. Christopher Isherwood paints a captivating portrait of a man who ultimately loses everything with great precision. As in "Goodbye to Berlin," he uniquely captures the atmosphere of pre-war Germany from the perspective of a seemingly uninvolved observer.