Maggie Hayes

Jack Kelly is a successful novelist who leads a reclusive life in his apartment in Paris. His first novel, Made in Belfast, was a critical and commercial success – there was only one problem: it exposed the private lives and innermost secrets of his close friends and family, and none of them have spoken to him since he ran away. But when circumstances conspire to bring him back to his hometown for a few days, he decides to spend that time putting things right with the friends he betrayed, the brother he abandoned, and the fiancée he jilted.

In 1931 budding author Christopher Isherwood goes to Berlin at the invitation of his friend W. H. Auden for the gay sex that abounds in the city. Whilst working as an English teacher his housemates include bewigged old queen Gerald Hamilton and would-be actress Jean Ross, who sings tunelessly in a seedy cabaret club. They and others he meets get put into his stories. After a fling with sexy rent boy Caspar he falls for street sweeper Heinz, paying medical bills for the boy's sickly mother, to the disapproval of her other son, Nazi Gerhardt. With Fascism rapidly rising Christopher returns to London with Heinz but is unable to prevent his return to Germany when his visa expires. Years later Christopher, now a successful writer, returns to Berlin for a final meeting with Heinz, now married with children.