Book description
WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY PHILIP HENSHER
'Radiant with observation, never wasting a word, funny and
sympathetic' Stephen Spender
Berlin, the Greek Islands, London and California. 1928, 1932, 1988
and 1940. Four portraits, four settings, four narrators, all known as
"Christopher Isherwood"; all connected through their own
experiences of private sexual hell. Often regarded as the best of his
novels, Down There on a Visit tells the vivid stories of
Isherwood's life that, together with the Berlin
Stories, were to have comprised his great unfinished epic novel.
'May be the best Christopher Isherwood has written. A deeply
intelligent and quietly compelling story' New York Times
Christopher Isherwood was born in 1904. He began to write at
university and later moved to Berlin, where he gave English lessons to
support himself. He witnessed first hand the rise to power of Hitler and
the Nazi party in Germany and some of his best works, such as
Mr.
Norris Changes Trains
and
Goodbye to Berlin,
draw on these experiences. He created the character of Sally Bowles,
later made famous as the heroine of the musical
Cabaret
. Isherwood travelled with W. H Auden to China in the late 1930s before
going with him to America in 1939. He died on 4 January 1986. His novel
A Single Man
was recently made into an award-winning film by Tom Ford, starring Colin
Firth and Julianne Moore.
