Christopher and His Kind

Description

Isherwood's candid memoir of his life in 1930s Berlin. A seminal book of gay liberation which made him the grand old man of the movement. In November 1929, Christopher Isherwood - determined to become a 'permanent foreigner' - packed a rucksack and two suitcases and left England on a one-way ticket for Berlin. With incredible candour and wit, Isherwood recalls the decadence of Berlin's night scene and his route to sexual liberation. As the Nazis rise to power, Isherwood describes his dramatic struggle to save his partner Heinz from persecution.

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.

Pepys of the bohemian quarter * New York Sun * The best prose writer in English -- Gore Vidal Indispensable for admirers of this truly masterly writer * New York Times * Christopher and His Kind is written with the lucidity, the intelligence, and the wit that we have come to expect from Isherwood at his best * New Statesman * Christopher Isherwood is back in vogue * Independent *