Two acclaimed novels based on Isherwood's experiences in pre-war Berlin, together in one volume
Christopher Isherwood was born at High lane, Cheshire, in 1904. He
left Cambridge without graduationg, tried briefly to study medicine
and in 1928 published All the Conspirators, followed by a second
novel, The Memorial in 1932. From 1928 onwards he lived mostly out
of England- four years in Berlin, five in various European
countries including Portugal, Holland, Belgium and Denmark. In 1939
he went to California, which became his home for the rest of his
life. His Berlin experiences produced two novels, Mr Norris Changes
Trains (1935) and Goodbye to Berlin (1939).
Isherwood worked with the American Friends Service Committee during
part of the war. In 1946 he became a US citizen. Following his move
to America he wrote five novels - Prater Violet, The World in the
Evening, Down There on a Visit, A Single Man and A Meeting by the
River; a travel book about South America, The Condor and the Cows;
and Ramakrishna and his Disciples, a biography of the great Indian
mystic.
In 1971 he published Kathleen and Frank, a book based on the
correspondence of his parents and his mother's diary, in 1977
Christopher and his Kind, an autobiographical account of the years
1929 to 1939, and in 1980 My Guru and His Disciple, the story of
his friendship with the Swami Prabhavananda. He died in 1986.
Isherwood is one of the great mythmakers of his time. The Berlin
Novels are masterpieces, funny, darkly innocent explorations of a
world Berlin in the Thirties that is now as firmly in the past as
Pompeii
*Observer*
Mr Norris Changes Trains is a masterpiece in comic portraiture
*Guardian*
In Mr Norris Changes Trains, Isherwood sketches with the lightest
of touches the last gasp of the decaying demi-monde and the
vigorous world of Communists and Nazis, grappling with each other
on the edge of the abyss
*Sunday Telegraph*
Reading Goodbye to Berlin is much like overhearing anecdotes in a
crowded bar while history knocks impatiently at the windows.
*Guardian*
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