3 Review(s)

Four narrators, all known as "Christopher Isherwood", in different locations and periods of time, paint portraits of their own private sexual hells. WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY PHILIP HENSHER. 'Radiant with observation, never wasting a word, funny and sympathetic' Stephen Spender. Berlin, the Greek Islands, London and California. 1928, 1932, 1988 and 1940. Four portraits, four settings, four narrators, all known as "Christopher Isherwood"; all connected through their own experiences of private sexual hell. Often regarded as the best of his novels, Down There on a Visit tells the vivid stories of Isherwood's life that, together with the Berlin Stories, were to have comprised his great unfinished epic novel. About the Author 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.