Bøger af Christopher Isherwood

“»Farvel til Berlin« er en totalt levende og præcis og helt nærværende og vedkommende skildring af en by i en historisk overgangsfase og i en skræmmende forvandlingsproces.” – Berlingske, 6 stjerner “Mesterroman om Weimarrepublikkens sidste dage genudgives på forbilledlig vis på dansk.” – Politiken, 5 hjerter“Isherwood skriver ganske enkelt forrygende” – WeekendavisenFarvel til Berlin er en af det 20. århundredes helt store klassikere og ligger til grund for den Oscarvindende film Cabaret. Farvel til Berlin foregår i 1930’erne og maler levende kontrasterne mellem glamour og uhumskhed, umådeholden livsstil og fornedrelse, som kendertegnede livet i Berlin på den tid. Isherwood beskriver, hvordan de folk, der var truet af nazisternes fremturen, levede deres liv; den velhavende jødiske rigmandsdatter, Natalia Landauer, et homoseksuelt par, Peter og Otto, samt den vidunderligt dekadente, men rodløse Sally Bowles.”Et fremragende billede på et samfund i forfald.” George Orwell"Når man læser denne roman, er det som at overhøre anekdoter i en overfyldt bar, mens verdenshistorien banker utålmodigt på vinduet.” The GuardianFarvel til Berlin blev udgivet for første gang i 1939 og er blevet lavet om til både en film og et skuespil med titlen I Am a Camera med Julie Harris i rollen som Sally Bowles. I filmen Cabaret spilles rollen af Liza Minnelli. Med træffende præcision og humor beskriver Isherwood den by, han selv boede i fra 1929 til 1933; han viser Berlins charmerende avenuer og caféer og det svulstige natteliv; han beretter om drømmerne, de excentriske, de rodløse og nasserne samt gangstere og millionærer uden skyggen af moral. Hitlers skygge hviler tungt over Isherwoods brogede slæng – den vidunderligt dekadente Sally Bowles, den trinde Fräulein Schröder, som overvejer at få formindsket sin barm kirurgisk for at slippe for sin hjertebanken, familien Nowak, som hele tiden skændes og lever med fattigdom og sygdom, og den velhavende, jødiske familie, Landauer, som er dømt til undergang.Christopher Isherwood (1904-1986) er en af det 20. århundredes mest bemærkelsesværdige forfattere. Desuden er han nok den første erklærede homoseksuelle forfatter, som er blevet læst af et bredt publikum. Hans litterære omgangskreds talte blandt andre W.H. Auden, Truman Capote, E.M. Forster, Stephen Spender og Tennessee Williams.Christopher Isherwood blev født i High Lane i Cheshire, England, I 1904. Han droppede ud af Cambridge, inden han fik gjort sin uddannelse færdig, og forsøgte sig kortvarigt med medicinstudiet. I 1928 fik han udgivet sin første roman, All the Conspirators, efterfulgt af sin anden roman i 1932, The Memorial. I 1928 forlod han England og levede fire år i Berlin og fem år i forskellige andre lande i Europa, blandt andet i Portugal, Holland, Belgien og Danmark. I 1939 rejste han til Californien, hvor han boede resten af sit liv. Fra sin tid i Berlin fik han inspiration til sine to romaner Mr Norris Changes Trains (1935) og Farvel til Berlin (1939). Isherwood arbejdede for American Friends Service Committee under noget af krigen. I 1946 blev han amerikansk statsborger. Efter at have bosat sig i USA, skrev han fem romaner: Prater Violet, The World in the Evening, Down There on a Visit, A Single Man og A Meeting by the River. Han skrev også en rejsebog om Sydamerika, The Condor and the Cows, samt Ramakrishna and his Disciples, en bog om indisk spiritualitet. I 1971 fik han udgivet bogen Kathleen and Frank, som bygger på brevkorrespondancen mellem hans mor og far samt morens dagbog. I 1977 udkom Christopher and his Kind, en selvbiografi over hans liv mellem 1929 og 1939. Endelig udkom My Guru and His Disciple i 1980, som handler om hans venskab med Swami Prabhavananda. Christopher Isherwood døde i 1986.”Sally Bowles fik det helt store fokus i musicalen Cabaret, men teaterstykket lever ikke op til bogens gennemslagskraft og sproglige overskud.” Time (Det 20. århundredes 100 bedste engelsksprogede romaner)”Isherwoods stemme er klar og tydelig i dette værk, som er en nærmest magisk og sprudlende forening af historie og skaberkraft. Uanset hvor mange gange vi læser bogen, vil hver gang føles som den første.” Anmeldelse i The New York Times

Goodbye to Berlin, a captivating novel by Christopher Isherwood, was first published in 1989 by Vintage Publishing. This masterpiece, which falls under the genre of semi-autobiographical novels, paints a vivid picture of Berlin in the early 1930s, just as Hitler was rising to power. Isherwood brilliantly captures the spirit of that time, immersing readers in the city's dark underbelly, its vibrant nightlife, and its people's resilience amidst political and social upheaval. This book is a must-read for any lover of historical fiction or anyone interested in the effects of politics and ideology on ordinary people's lives. As always, Vintage Publishing has done a fantastic job of bringing this important work to the public. This English language edition is a testament to Isherwood's powerful storytelling and his ability to transport readers to a different time and place.

Beautifully repackaged as part of the Picador Modern Classics series, this special edition is small enough to fit in your pocket and bold enough to stand out on your bookshelf.Welcome to sunny suburban 1960s Southern California. George is a gay middle-aged English professor, adjusting to solitude after the tragic death of his young partner. He is determined to persist in the routines of his former life. A Single Man follows him over the course of an ordinary twenty-four hours. Behind his British reserve, tides of grief, rage, and loneliness surge-but what is revealed is a man who loves being alive despite all the everyday injustices.When Christopher Isherwood's A Single Man first appeared, it shocked many with its frank, sympathetic, and moving portrayal of a gay man in maturity. Isherwood's favorite of his own novels, it now stands as a classic lyric meditation on life as an outsider.

First published in 1934, Goodbye to Berlin has been popularized on stage and screen by Julie Harris in I Am a Camera and Liza Minelli in Cabaret. Isherwood magnificently captures 1931 Berlin: charming, with its avenues and cafés; marvelously grotesque, with its nightlife and dreamers; dangerous, with its vice and intrigue; powerful and seedy, with its mobs and millionaires - this was the period when Hitler was beginning his move to power. Goodbye to Berlin is inhabited by a wealth of characters: the unforgettable and "divinely decadent"Sally Bowles; plump Fraulein Schroeder, who considers reducing her Buste relieve her heart palpitations; Peter and Otto, a gay couple struggling to come to terms with their relationship; and the distinguished and doomed Jewish family, the Landauers.

In November 1929, Christopher Isherwood - determined to become a 'permanent foreigner' - packed a rucksack and two suitcases and left England on a one-way ticket for Berlin. With incredible candour and wit, Isherwood recalls the decadence of Berlin's night scene and his route to sexual liberation.

Mærkelige begivenheder fandt sted omkring Ramakrishnas fødsel i Bengalen 1836; de varslede en stor avatars komme. I løbet af få år nåede han den højeste bevidsthedstilstand. Uimodståelig elskelig af væsen og fuld af visdom drog han tilhængere og disciple til sig, som han med en berøring eller et blik kunne skænke indre oplysning. I bogen om Ramakrishnas liv har vi en dokumenteret skildring på nært hold af en verdenslærer. Efter hans død udbredte hans disciple, og ganske særlig den navnkundige Vivekananda, hans lære over den vestlige verden. Forfatteren er selv en discipel af Ramakrishna og har skrevet sin bog med indsigt og varme, så enhver vesterlænding kan forstå den indiske verden og dens tankegang.

Includes Introduction To Vivekananda, By Christopher Isherwood; Vivekananda And His Message, By Swami Prabhavananda; And Swamiji In Southern California, By Brahmacharini Usha.

The love story between Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy-in their own wordsThe English novelist and screenwriter Christopher Isherwood was already famous as the author of Goodbye to Berlin when he met Don Bachardy, a California teenager, on the beach in Santa Monica in 1952. Within a year, they began to live together as an openly gay couple, defying convention in the closeted world of Hollywood. Isherwood was forty-eight; Bachardy was eighteen. The Animals is the testimony in letters to their extraordinary partnership, which lasted until Isherwood's death in 1986-despite the thirty year age gap, affairs and jealousy (on both sides), the pressures of increasing celebrity, and the disdain of twentieth-century America for love between two men. The letters reveal the private world of the Animals: Isherwood was "Dobbin," a stubborn old workhorse; Bachardy was the rash, playful "Kitty." Isherwood had a gift for creating a safe and separate domestic milieu, necessary for a gay man in mid-twentieth-century America. He drew Bachardy into his semi-secret realm, nourished Bachardy's talent as a painter, and launched him into the artistic career that was first to threaten and eventually to secure their life together. The letters also tell of public achievements-the critical acclaim for A Single Man, the commercial success of Cabaret-and the bohemian whirl of friendships in Los Angeles, London, and New York with such stars as Truman Capote, Julie Harris, David Hockney, Vanessa Redgrave, Gore Vidal, and Tennessee Williams. Bold, transgressive, and playful, The Animals articulates the devotion, in tenderness and in storms, between two uniquely original spirits.

"I make myself remember. I am afraid of forgetting. I will have to forget if Iwant to go on living."California, 1962. College professor George is grieving the death of his long-termpartner Jim. As a middle-aged gay Englishman living in the Los Angelessuburbs, he is an outsider in every way. Haunted by his past and unable tomove forward, we follow him on one very ordinary day. But for George, this isgoing to be a day like no other...A Single Man features in the Guardian's 100 Best Novels Written in English,where it is described as 'a work of compressed brilliance.' Known to manythrough Tom Ford's film, Christopher Isherwood's masterpiece is now givena wry and compassionate retelling in Simon Reade's new adaptation for thestage.Powerful and sexy, A Single Man is a darkly amusing study of grief, love andloneliness from the celebrated writer of Goodbye to Berlin, the inspiration forCabaret.

"In the 1960s, Christopher Isherwood gave an unprecedented series of lectures at California universities about his life and work. During this time Isherwood, who would liberate the memoir and become the founding father of modern gay writing, spoke openly for the first time about his craft--on writing for film, theater, and novels--and spirituality. [This book] brings these free-flowing, wide-ranging public addresses together to reveal a distinctly American Isherwood at the top of his form"--

My Guru and His Disciple is a sweetly modest and honest portrait of Isherwood's spiritual instructor, Swami Prabhavananda, the Hindu priest who guided Isherwood for some thirty years. It is also a book about the often amusing and sometimes painful counterpoint between worldliness and holiness in Isherwood's own life. Sexual sprees, all-night drinking bouts, a fast car ride with Greta Garbo, scriptwriting conferences at MGM, intellectual sparring sessions with Berthold Brecht alternated with nights of fasting at the Vedanta Center, a six-month period of celibacy and sobriety, and the pious drudgery of translating (in collaboration with the Swami) the Bhagavad-Gita. Seldom has a single man been owed with such strong drives toward both sensuality and spirituality, abandon and discipline; out of the passionate dialectic between these drives, My Guru and His Disciple has been written.

Best known for The Berlin Stories-the inspiration for the Tony and Academy Award-winning musical Cabaret-Christopher Isherwood (1904-1986) was a major figure in twentieth-century fiction and the gay rights movement. Where Joy Resides is the perfect introduction to the author's essential writings.This collection presents two complete novels, Prater Violet and A Single Man; episodes from three other novels, Goodbye to Berlin, Down There on a Visit, and Lions and Shadows; along with excerpts from Isherwood's nonfiction works, Exhumations, Kathleen and Frank, and My Guru and His Disciple.

Kathleen and Frank is a love story set in the glory days of the British Empire, the last decades before World War I It is the story of Christopher Isherwood's parents, the winsome and lively daughter of a successful wine merchant and the reticent, artistically gifted soldier-son of a country squire. They met in 1895 outside a music rehearsal in an army camp and married in 1903 after Christopher's father returned from the Boer War. Frank was killed in an assault near Ypres in 1915; Kathleen remained a widow for the rest of her life. Their story is told through letters and Kathleen's diary, with connecting commentary by Isherwood. Kathleen and Frank is a family memoir, but it is also a richly detailed social history of a period of striking change- Queen Victoria's funeral, Blériot's flight across the English Channel, Sarah Bernhardt's Hamlet, suffragettes, rising hemlines, the beginning of the Troubles in Ireland-the period that shaped Isherwood himself. As a young man, Isherwood fled the tragedy that engulfed his parents' lives and threatened his own; in Kathleen and Frank, he reweaves the tapestry of family and heritage and places himself in the pattern.

"Prater Violet is the most charming novel I have read in a long time." -Diana TrillingOriginally published in 1945, Christopher Isherwood's Prater Violet is a stingingly satirical novel about the film industry. It centers around the production of the vacuous fictional melodrama Prater Violet, set in nineteenth-century Vienna, providing an ironic counterpoint to tragic events as Hitler annexes the real Vienna of the 1930s. The novel features vivid portraits of the imperious, passionate, and witty Austrian director Friedrich Bergmann and his disciple, a genial young screenwriter-the fictionalized Christopher Isherwood.

An indispensable memoir by one of the most prominent writers of his generationOriginally 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.

In this final volume of Christopher Isherwood's diaries, the celebrated writer greets advancing age with poignant humor and an unquenchable appetite for the new. Isherwood deepens his study of Hinduism, writes his final books, and immerses himself in the vibrant creative scenes of the 1970s. With his long-term companion, Don Bachardy, Isherwood delves into the art worlds of Los Angeles, New York, and London, where he meets Rauschenberg, Ruscha, Warhol, and Hockney. Collaborating with Bachardy on scripts for Broadway and Hollywood, he encounters John Huston, Merchant and Ivory, John Travolta, David Bowie, Jon Voight, Armistead Maupin, Elton John, and Joan Didion. This volume is a densely populated human comedy, sketched with both ruthlessness and benevolence against the background of the Vietnam War, the energy crisis, and the Nixon, Carter, and Reagan White Houses. The final installment of Isherwood's masterwork reveals a man candidly fearful of his approaching death, and yet engaged in the vitality and energy of daily life.

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.

Set in the aftermath of World War I, Christopher Isherwood's The Memorial is the witty, almost forensic portrayal of the dissolution of a tradition-bound English family. On the cusp of adulthood, the 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 of his father's roguish friend who survived the war and afterward threw himself into gay life.Published in 1932, when Isherwood was twenty-eight years old, The Memorial is the novel in which a dazzlingly talented young writer found his literary voice, the book in which Isherwood became Isherwood.

When Christopher Isherwood's A Single Man first appeared, it shocked many with its frank, sympathetic, and moving portrayal of a gay man in maturity. Isherwood's favorite of his own novels, it now stands as a classic lyric meditation on life as an outsider. Welcome to sunny suburban 1960s Southern California. George is a gay middle-aged English professor, adjusting to solitude after the tragic death of his young partner. He is determined to persist in the routines of his former life. A Single Man follows him over the course of an ordinary twenty-four hours. Behind his British reserve, tides of grief, rage, and loneliness surge-but what is revealed is a man who loves being alive despite all the everyday injustices.

Christopher Isherwoods klassiker Mr. Norris skifter tog (1933) om underviseren William Bradshaw, der møder den lyssky Arthur Norris på et tog og indleder et farverigt venskab.Mr. Norris skifter tog ligger emnemæssigt op ad Turbines tidligere udgivne Farvel til Berlin, og de to er tilsammen kendt som “The Berlin Novels”. Da den unge, britiske hovedperson, Bradshaw, begynder at lære Mr. Norris bedre at kende, opdager han, at Mr. Norris er en kontrasternes mand; han er ødsel, men på fallittens rand, han er overdrevet høflig og borgerlig, men er masochist med en ugentlig aftale ved en dominatrix, han er kommunist, men tænker ikke meget på andres ve og vel. Mr. Norris har en hemmelig virksomhed og en ansat ved navn Schmidt, der terroriserer ham.Som venskabet udvikler sig, bliver Bradshaw mere og mere mystificeret, og netop da Mr. Norris er tættest på konkurs, vender han tilbage fra Frankrig med masser af penge. I en tid hvor nazismen vinder frem, og Hitlers bøller går på gaden, er det ikke klogt at være hverken kommunist eller seksuelt afvigende, men Bradshaw er alligevel mere bekymret for sin vens lyssky forretninger, og hvor de kan føre dem begge hen.1930’ernes Berlin danner bagtæppe for Isherwoods både farverige og dystre roman. Den handler om nazismens tidlige dage i Tysklands hovedstad og om, hvordan faren voksede sig gradvist større for dem, som ikke troede på Hitlers rige.

This is the story of Christopher Isherwood's parents - their meeting in 1895, marriage in 1903 after his father had returned from the Boer War, and his father's death in an assault on Ypres in 1915, which left his mother a widow until her own death in 1960.

Christopher Isherwoods klassiker fra 1964 om den homoseksuelle George, der underviser på et college i det sydlige Californien og kæmper med sorgen og en eksistentiel krise i kølvandet på kæresten Jims død i en bilulykke. Handlingen i "Ene mand" udspiller sig hen over én dag i Georges liv i 1962. George står op, tager på arbejde, snakker med de studerende og kolleger og naboer, han tager i træningscenter, og han besøger sin fordrukne veninde, der oprindeligt kommer fra England ligesom George. Og gennem hele den rejse, som dagen byder på, diskuterer Georges indre stemme muligheden for nogensinde igen at finde noget godt og smukt i en verden, der ikke accepterer den person han er, og som har stjålet hans livs kærlighed fra ham.Romanen blev fejret som et mesterværk allerede ved udgivelsen. I 2009 blev romanen indspillet som film med Colin Firth og Julianne Moore i hovedrollerne. Colin Firth modtog en Oscarnominering for bedste mandlige hovedrolle for filmen.

On a train to Berlin in late 1930, William Bradshaw locks eyes with Arthur Norris, an irresistibly comical fellow Englishman wearing a rather obvious wig and nervous about producing his passport at the frontier. So begins a friendship conducted in the seedier quarters of the city, where Norris runs a dubious import-export business and lives in excited fear of his bullying secretary,his creditors, and his dominatrix girlfriend, Anni. As the worldwide economic Depression strangles the masses and the Communists make a desperate stand against Fascism and war, Norris sells himself as political orator, spy, and double agent. He also sells his friends. Like its companion novel, Goodbye to Berlin, Mr Norris Changes Trains offers unforgettable characters struggling in the vortex as the Nazis rise to power.

WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY SIMON CALLOWIn 1939, as Europe approaches war, Isherwood, an instinctive pacifist, travels west to California, seeking a new set of beliefs to replace the failed Leftism of the thirties.

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY PICO IYERIn September 1947, long before mass tourism and with no knowledge of Spanish, Christopher Isherwood and William Caskey left for a six-month tour of Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Argentina.

Prater Violet resembles episodes in Goodbye to Berlin and keeps up the same high level of excellence' - Edmund WilsonAn impatient phone call from the temperamental Austrian director, Friedrich Bergmann, introduces a young Christopher Isherwood to the film industry.