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Review

296 pages, hardcover
"The best English prose writer of this century."
Gore Vidal
Best known for Goodbye to Berlin, the inspiration for the Tony and Oscar award-winning musical CabaretChristopher Isherwood has always been considered both a literary and a gay pioneer. That is truer now than ever. Readers of his plays, novels, and diaries continue to discover Isherwood's lasting contribution to literature, autobiographical fiction, and memoir, to gay rights and to twentieth-century culture. In The Isherwood Century , editors James J. Berg and Chris Freeman have gathered twenty-four essays and interviews on Christopher Isherwood's life and work. The volume, the first of its kind on Isherwood, offers a fresh, in-depth view of the author, his literary legacy, and his continuing influence. Mixing critiques with personal reminiscences, The Isherwood Century includes an essay and drawings by artist Don Bachardy, Isherwood's longtime partner; recollections from celebrated authors Armistead Maupin and Edmund White; and moving memoirs by preeminent scholar Carolyn Heilbrun and noted poet Michael S. Harper. Two interviews are also published here for the first time: an interview with Isherwood conducted by Carola M. Kaplan in 1973 and Niladri Chatterjee's 1997 conversation with Don Bachardy.
"This varied collection of interviews, memoirs, and essays constitutes a much deserved tribute to one of the twentieth century's most insightful observers of the human condition. The Isherwood Century provides eloquent testimony to Isherwood's continuing significance as artist, moralist, and courage-teacher."
Claude J. Summers, author of Christopher Isherwood
"A superb anthology, varied and informative. Here at last is a collection that matches my own enthusiasm for Isherwood's fiction and my own sense of his importance as an English writer. In fact, it is hard to read this book without pulling Isherwood volumes off my shelves. It is the book's triumph."
Lev Raphael, author of Dancing on Tisha B'av
"The penetrating essays in this volume will add to Isherwood's standing as a leading chronicler of 20th century events, personalities and literature."
Lewis Whittington in The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide