Book description
Breaking a long silence Oliver, a young Englishman, writes to his
elder brother, Patrick. Oliver, the idealistic younger brother is
living in a Hindu Monastery and has decided to take his final monastic
vows. Patrick, a successful publisher and a married man with a
skeleton in his cupboard, decides to visit Oliver to persuade him not
renounce the world.
First published in 1967, A Meeting by the River delicately
depicts the complexity of sibling relationships and dramatizes the
conflict between sexuality and spirituality.
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
