Isherwood, Christopher (1904–86),English‐born author, studied at Cambridge, collaborated with
Auden on three satirical prose and verse plays,
The Dog Beneath the Skin (1936),
The Ascent of F6 (1936), and
On the Frontier (1938), and with him also wrote about their voyage to China in
Journey to a War (1939). He had already published his first novel in 1928 and had lived in Berlin for four years, the city which was the setting of his novel
The Last of Mr. Norris (1935), and the sketches
Goodbye to Berlin (1939), the latter involving a fictive character bearing the author's name, and therefore retitled
I Am a Camera when dramatized (1951) by John Van Druten. Isherwood came to the U.S. (1939), settled near Los Angeles, and was naturalized in 1946. His fiction written in the U.S. includes
Prater Violet (1945), a symbolic novelette involving the story of an Austrian motion‐picture director who produces a film about Vienna in London;
The World in the Evening (1954);
Down There on a Visit (1962), the frank, autobiographical story of the quest for selfhood by a character called by the author's name;
A Single Man (1964), about a day in the sad, lonely life of a middle‐aged homosexual professor in a California university after the death of the man he loved; and
A Meeting by the River (1967), a philosophic tale of brothers with different values who meet in India, one to become a Hindu monk, the other to find a site to film a motion picture. Three very personal books are
Kathleen and Frank (1972), an account of his parents and their influence on him;
Christopher and His Kind (1976), about his own life and male lovers from 1929 to 1939; and
My Guru and His Disciple (1980), about both worldly and spiritual experiences.
October (1981) is a diary of how he and his beloved friend spent October 1979.
The Condor and the Cows (1949) deals with a trip to South America.
Exhumations (1966) collects stories, verse, and articles.
People One Ought To Know (1981) contains poems written for children when he was only 21.
