Down There on a Visit: A Novel

by Christopher Isherwood

Overview

Bremen, 1928. The Greek Islands, 1932. London, 1938. California, 1940. Four portraits, four settings, four narrators all named Christopher Isherwood. Here are the postcards home from a spiritual tourist looking for a new mode of life as well as a new place to live while Europe, and then the world, moves relentlessly toward war. Which of the guides he encounters can lead him to a better future? The businessman, the utopian, the guru, the geisha?

Published in 1962, Down There on a Visit is based on material from a proposed epic that would also have incorporated The Berlin Stories. It is now widely regarded as the most accomplished of Isherwood's novels.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780374533809
Publisher:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date:	06/11/2013
Series:	FSG Classics
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Christopher Isherwood (1904-1986) was born outside of Manchester, England. His life in Berlin from 1929 to 1933 inspired The Berlin Stories, which were adapted into a play, a film, and the musical Cabaret. Isherwood 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, including the novel A Single Man and his autobiography, Christopher and His Kind.

Editorial Reviews

Stunning. I can think of no better word.” —Dorothy Parker, Esquire

“This is probably Isherwood's best novel. It offers the sheer pleasure of writing completely personal and yet completely controlled, radiant with observation, never wasting a word, funny and sympathetic.” —Stephen Spender, The New Republic

“This excellent novel . . . may be the best Christopher Isherwood has written . . . A deeply intelligent and quietly compelling story.” —Gerald Sykes, The New York Times

“This is the best of Mr. Isherwood's novels.” —Cyril Connolly, The Times (London)

From the Publisher