Christopher Isherwood

Christopher Isherwood (1904–1986) was one of the most celebrated writers of his generation. He left Cambridge without being graduated, briefly studied medicine, and then turned to writing his first novels, All the Conspirators and The Memorial. Between 1929 and 1939, he lived mainly abroad in Europe, spending four years in Berlin and writing the novels Mr. Norris Changes Trains and Goodbye to Berlin, on which the musical Cabaret was based. He wrote three plays with W. H. Auden and emigrated with him to the United States in 1939. Auden settled in New York, and Isherwood went on to California, where he became a successful screenwriter. He was granted United States citizenship in 1946 and wrote another five novels, including Prater Violet, Down There on a Visit, and A Single Man. He also wrote a travel book about South America and a biography of the Indian mystic Ramakrishna. In the late 1960s and the 1970s, he turned to autobiography—Kathleen and Frank, Christopher and His Kind, My Guru and His Disciple—and published October, one month of his diary illustrated with drawings by his partner, Don Bachardy.

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There is something wonderful about a book that is unafraid of its footnotes.