The Hustler: The Story of A Nameless Love from Friedrichstrasse

In this novel, first published in 1926, fifteen-year-old Gunther runs away from his village to the big city of Berlin, where he falls into the life of a street hustler. There Hermann Graff, a sensitive and naïve young man, falls hopelessly in love with him. Christopher Isherwood said of this novel in 1983: "I have always loved this book dearly-despite and even because of its occasional sentimental absurdities. And it does give you a picture of the Berlin sexual underworld early in this century which I know, from my own experience, to be authentic."