Christopher Isherwood

A single man

The last of Mr. Norris [and] Goodbye to Berlin.  With a pref. by the author.

Berlin stories

After a chance encounter on a train the English teacher William Bradshaw starts a close friendship with the mildly sinister Arthur Norris. Norris is a man of contradictions; lavish but heavily in debt, excessively polite but sexually deviant. First published in 1933 Mr Norris Changes Trainspiquantly evokes the atmosphere of Berlin during the rise of the Nazis.

Mr. Norris Changes Trains

"Originally published in 1976, Christopher and His Kind covers the most memorable ten years in the writer's life - from 1929, when Isherwood left England to spend a week in Berlin and decided to stay there indefinitely, to 1939, when he arrived in America." "What most impressed the first readers of this memoir was the candor with which he describes his life in gay Berlin of the 1930s and his struggles to save his companion, Heinz, from the Nazis. An engrossing and dramatic story and a fascinating glimpse into a little-known world, Christopher and His Kind remains one of Isherwood's greatest achievements."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Christopher and His Kind

Goodbye to Berlin

Originally published in 1945, Prater Violet is a stingingly satirical novel about the film industry. It centers around the production of the vacuous fictional melodrama Prater Violet, set in nineteenth-century Vienna, providing ironic counterpoint to tragic events as Hitler annexes the real Vienna of the 1930s. The novel features the vivid portraits of imperious, passionate, and witty Austrian director Friedrich Bergmann and his disciple, a genial young screenwriter -- the fictionalized Christopher Isherwood.

Prater Violet

After the sudden death of his longtime lover, George must adjust to life on his own as a professor in Southern California in the early 1960s. During the course of an ordinary day, George is haunted by memories as he seeks connections with the world around him.

Un uomo solo

With The Memorial, Christopher Isherwood began his lifelong work of rewriting his own experiences into witty yet almost forensic portraits of modern society. Set in the aftermath of World War I, The Memorial portrays the dissolution of a tradition-bound English family. Cambridge student Eric Vernon finds himself torn between his desire to emulate his heroic father, who led a life of quiet sacrifice before dying in the war, and his envy for his father's great friend Edward Blake, who survived the war only to throw himself into gay life in Berlin and the pursuit of meaningless relationships.

The Memorial

Set in the 1930s, Goodbye to Berlin evokes the glamour and sleaze, excess and repression of Berlin society. Isherwood shows the lives of people under threat from the rise of the Nazis: a wealthy Jewish heiress, Natalia Landauer, a gay couple, Peter and Otto, and an English upper-class waif, the divinely self-indulgent Sally Bowles.

Against the backdrop of World War II, The World in the Evening charts the emotional development of Stephen Monk, an aimless Englishman living in California. After his second marriage suddenly ends, Stephen finds himself living with a relative in a small Pennsylvania Quaker town, haunted by memories of his prewar affair with a younger man during a visit to the Canary Islands. The world traveler comes to a gradual understanding of himself and of his newly adopted homeland. When first published in 1953, The World in the Evening was notable for its clear-eyed depiction of European and American mores, sexuality, and religion. Today, readers herald Isherwood's frank portrayal of bisexuality and his early appreciation of low and high camp.

The World in the Evening

In 1938 the legendary Hogarth Press published the first of Christopher Isherwood's autobiographical writings, Lions and Shadows. In this book, Isherwood evokes the atmosphere of Cambridge as only he knew it, describing his life as a tutor, medical student, and struggling writer. The result is a captivating account of a young novelist's development in the burgeoning literary culture of the 1920s and of his experiences as he forges lifelong friendships with his peers W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender, and Edward Upward.

An Education in the Twenties

Lions and Shadows

Two English brothers meet, after a long separation, in India. Oliver, the idealistic younger brother, prepares to take his final vows as a Hindu monk. Patrick, a successful publisher with a wife and children in London and a male lover in California, has publicly admired his brother's convictions while privately criticizing his choices. First published in 1967, A Meeting by the River delicately depicts the complexity of sibling relationships -- the resentment and competitiveness as well as the love and respect. Ultimately, the brothers' exposure to each other's differences deepens their awareness of themselves. In A Meeting by the River, Christopher Isherwood dramatizes the conflict between sexuality and spirituality that inspired his late writings.

A Meeting by the River

Includes Mr Norris Changes Trains and Goodbye to Berlin , the inspiration for the stage and screen musical Cabaret . It is a haunting evocation of the gathering storm of the Nazi terror and a portrait of Bohemian Berlin - a city and a world on the very brink of ruin.

The Berlin Novels

Addio a Berlino

Tek Basina Bir Adam

Memoirs of the novelist's years after he left England to come to America explore Isherwood's thoughts on sex, politics, art, and religion

Diaries

Excerpt: This is the story of a phenomenon. I will begin by calling him simply that, rather than 'holy man', 'mystic', or 'saint', all emotive words with mixed associations which may attract some readers, repel others. A phenomenon is always a fact, an object of experience. That is how I shall try to approach Ramakrishna... I only ask you to approach Ramakrishna with the same open-minded curiosity you might feel for any highly unusual human being. Christopher Isherwood unfolds a fantastic story with a calm finesse...

Ramakrishna and His Disciples

Samotny mezczyzna

Um Homem Singular

Aldous Huxley

Originally written in the late 1930s and recently discovered, this short novel presents an intriguing saga of the paranormal, love, money, and redemption, set against the colorful backdrop of California in the 1920s. By the author of Brave New World and the author of The Berlin Stories. 50,000 first printing.

Christopher Isherwood

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