Lost Years

Zusatztext

Christopher Isherwood settled in California in 1939 and spent the war years writing for Hollywood, but by 1945 he had all but ceased to write fiction and even abandoned his habit of keeping a diary. Instead he embarked on a life of frantic socialising and drinking. Looking back from the 1970s, Isherwood recreated these years from personal memories to form a remarkably honest mixture of private and social history.

Autorenportrait

<p>Christopher Isherwood was born at High lane, Cheshire, in 1904. He left Cambridge without graduationg, tried briefly to study medicine and in 1928 published<i>All the Conspirators</i>, followed by a second novel,<i>The Memorial</i>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,<i>Mr Norris Changes Trains</i>(1935) and<i>Goodbye to Berlin</i>(1939).</p><p>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 -<i>Prater Violet</i>,<i>The World in the Evening</i>,<i>Down There on a Visit</i>,<i>A Single Man</i>and<i>A Meeting by the River</i>; a travel book about South America,<i>The Condor and the Cows</i>; and<i>Ramakrishna and his Disciples</i>, a biography of the great Indian mystic.</p><p>In 1971 he published<i>Kathleen and Frank</i>, a book based on the correspondence of his parents and his mother's diary, in 1977<i>Christopher and his Kind</i>, an autobiographical account of the years 1929 to 1939, and in 1980<i>My Guru and His Disciple</i>, the story of his friendship with the Swami Prabhavananda. He died in 1986.</p>

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