Isherwood originally intended to call this novel "The Lost", a title he conceived in German, "Die Verlorenen". The title "The Lost" would have encompassed three different meanings: "those who have lost their way", by which he meant Germans who were being misled by Adolf Hitler; "the doomed", those like the character Bernard Landauer whom Hitler had already marked for destruction; and "those whom respectable Society regards as moral outcasts", like the characters Sally Bowles, Otto Nowak and Mr Norris himself. Isherwood began writing the book in 1934, while he and his companion Heinz Neddermayer were living in the Canary Islands. "The Lost" was initially planned as a much more comprehensive work, but Isherwood jettisoned much of the material and many of the characters, including Sally Bowles, the Nowaks and the Landauers, to focus on Mr Norris. This process he likened to the surgery performed to separate Siamese twins, "freeing Norris from the stranglehold of his brothers and sisters". The excised material formed the basis for the rest of his "Berlin Stories". He completed work on the novel on 12 August of that year.