Series: Bard Book

With The Memorial, Christopher Isherwood began his lifelong work of rewriting his own experiences into witty yet almost forensic portraits of modern society. Set in the aftermath of World War I, The Memorial portrays the dissolution of a tradition-bound English family. Cambridge student Eric Vernon finds himself torn between his desire to emulate his heroic father, who led a life of quiet sacrifice before dying in the war, and his envy for his father's great friend Edward Blake, who survived the war only to throw himself into gay life in Berlin and the pursuit of meaningless relationships.

Down There on a Visit

by Christopher Isherwood

Published November 1974

WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY PHILIP HENSHER

Berlin, the Greek Islands, London and California. 1928, 1932, 1938 and 1940. Four portraits, four settings, four narrators, all known as 'Christopher Isherwood'. 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 Novels, were to have comprised his great unfinished epic novel.

A Single Man

by Christopher Isherwood

Published December 1964

In this brilliantly perceptive novel, a middle aged professor living in California is alienated from his students by differences in age and nationality, and from the rest of society by his homosexuality. Isherwood explores the depths of the human soul and its ability to triumph over loneliness, alienation and loss.

The World in the Evening

by Christopher Isherwood

Published 20 August 1973

Against the backdrop of World War II, this work charts the emotional development of Stephen Monk, an aimless Englishman living in California. The world traveller comes to a gradual understanding of himself and of his newly adopted homeland.'