Christopher and His Kind: A Memoir, 1929-1939 (FSG Classics) - Softcover

Isherwood, Christopher

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0374535221 ISBN 13: 9780374535223

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015

Synopsis

An indispensable memoir by one of the most prominent writers of his generation

Originally published in 1976, Christopher and His Kind covers the most memorable ten years in the writer's life―from 1928, when Christopher Isherwood left England to spend a week in Berlin and decided to stay there indefinitely, to 1939, when he arrived in America. His friends and colleagues during this time included W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender, and E. M. Forster, as well as colorful figures he met in Germany and later fictionalized in his two Berlin novels―and who appeared again, fictionalized to an even greater degree, in I Am a Camera and Cabaret.
What most impressed the first readers of this memoir, however, was the candor with which he describes his life in gay Berlin of the 1930s and his struggles to save his companion, a German man named Heinz, from the Nazis. An engrossing and dramatic story and a fascinating glimpse into a little-known world, Christopher and His Kind remains one of Isherwood's greatest achievements.

About this title

About the Author:

Christopher Isherwood (1904-1986) was born in Manchester, England, and lived in Berlin from 1929 to 1933 and immigrated to the United States in 1939. A major figure in twentieth-century fiction and the gay rights movement, he wrote more than twenty books. FSG Classics presents some of his finest work, including the novels Prater Violet, A Single Man, and A Meeting by the River; the semi-autobiographical Lions and Shadows; and the memoir Christopher and His Kind.

Review:

“Indispensable for admirers of this truly masterly writer.” ―Peter Stansky, The New York Times Book Review

“The best prose writer in English... The later Isherwood is even better than the early cameraman.” ―Gore Vidal, The New York Review of Books

“Isherwood freely discusses a dimension of his experience previously repressed in his fiction, his homosexuality. And in telling the truth about himself, he ultimately transcends the limits of autobiography to write what is, in effect, another novel.” ―Paul Piazza, The Washington Post

About this edition

• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0374535221
• ISBN 13: 9780374535223
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352