Isherwood

Born into the English landed gentry, the heir to a substantial country estate, Christopher Isherwood ended up in California, an American citizen and the disciple of a Hindu swami. En route, he became a leading writer of the 1930`s generation, an unmatched chronicler of pre-Hitler Berlin, an experimental dramatist, a war reporter, a travel writer, a pacifist, a Hollywood screenwriter, a monk, and a grand old man of the emerging gay liberation movement. In this biography, the first to be written since Isherwood`s death, and the only one with access to all Isherwood`s papers, Peter Parker traces the long journey of a man who never felt at home wherever he lived. Isherwood`s travels were a means of escape: from his family, his class, his country, and the dead weight of the past. Parker reveals the truth about Isherwood`s relationship with his war-hero father, his strong-willed mother, and his disturbed younger brother, Richard, who was also homosexual. He also draws upon a vast number of letters to describe Isherwood`s complicated relationships with such lifelong friends as W.H. Auden, Stephen Spender, Edward Upward and John Lehmann. The result is a frank portrait of contradictions, a man searching for meaning in life, and one of the twentieth century`s most significant writers.