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

On the other end of the line is the brilliant yet temperamental Austrian director Friedrich Bergmann. Christopher’s job is to rescue the script of a saccharine love story set in nineteenth-century Vienna, a film called Prater Violet. Meanwhile, in the real Vienna of 1934, the Austrian right crushes a socialist uprising. Bergmann is distraught; his family is in danger in Vienna, while his prophecy of a coming war goes unheeded by his British colleagues. As tensions on set grow, studio intrigues and competing egos threaten to derail the film, all while Hitler’s shadow lengthens over Europe.

This satirical tale has all the charm and observational prowess of Isherwood’s more famous novels, Goodbye to Berlin and A Single Man. Hailed as a ‘masterpiece’, a ‘discovery’, a ‘gem’, it is showcased here in audio by the versatile Daniel Weyman.