Mr Norris Changes Trains
First edition
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| Author | Christopher Isherwood |
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| Language | English |
| Publisher | Hogarth Press |
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Publication date
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1935 |
| Pages | 280 |
| OCLC | 1160132 |
Mr Norris Changes Trains (published in the United States as The Last of Mr. Norris) is a 1935 novel by the British writer Christopher Isherwood. It is frequently included with Goodbye to Berlin, another Isherwood novel, in a single volume, The Berlin Stories. Inspiration for the novel was drawn from Isherwood's experiences as an expatriate living in Berlin during the early 1930s, and the character of Mr Norris is based on Gerald Hamilton.
Isherwood began work on a much larger work he called The Lost before paring down its story and characters to focus on Norris. The book was critically and popularly acclaimed but years after its publication Isherwood denounced it as shallow and dishonest.
The novel follows the movements of William Bradshaw, its narrator, who meets a nervous-looking man named Arthur Norris on a train going from the Netherlands to Germany. As they approach the frontier William strikes up a conversation with Mr Norris, who wears an ill-fitting wig and carries a suspect passport.
William and Mr Norris succeed in crossing the frontier. Afterward, Mr Norris invites William to dinner and the two become friends. In Berlin they see each other frequently (including eating ham and eggs at the first class restaurant of Berlin Friedrichstraße railway station). Several oddities of Mr Norris's personal life are revealed, one of which is that he is a masochist. Another is that he is a Communist, which is dangerous in Hitler-era Germany. Other aspects of Mr Norris's personal life remain mysterious. He seems to run a business with an assistant Schmidt, who tyrannises him. Norris gets into more and more straitened circumstances and has to leave Berlin.
Norris subsequently returns with his fortunes restored and apparently conducting communication with an unknown Frenchwoman called Margot. Schmidt reappears and tries to blackmail Norris. Norris uses Bradshaw as a decoy to get an aristocratic friend of his, Baron Pregnitz, to take a holiday in Switzerland and meet "Margot" under the guise of a Dutchman. Bradshaw is urgently recalled by Ludwig Bayer (based on Willi Münzenberg) one of the leaders of the Communist groups, who explains that Norris was spying for the French and both his group and the police know about it. Bradshaw observes they are being followed by the police and persuades Norris to leave Germany. After the Reichstag fire, the Nazis eliminate Bayer and most of Norris's comrades. Bradshaw returns to England where he receives intermittent notes and postcards from Norris, who has fled Berlin, pursued by Schmidt. The novel's last words are drawn from a postcard that Mr Norris sends to William from Rio de Janeiro: "What have I done to deserve all this?"
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