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The Memorial Christopher Isherwood |
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A lively, ironic portrayal of England in the 1920s. 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. "Only now that Isherwood is dead can the pattern be seen clearly in a life that ranged restlessly from Oxbridge skeptic to Hindu disciple, from literary collaborator with W. H. Auden to Boswell of prewar Britain and postwar Hollywood. . . . His novels and nonfiction now all seem to be chapters of one enormous work in which he is the major character." —The Guardian "A genuine interpretation of the times." —Frank Kermode A major figure in twentieth-century fiction and the gay rights movement, Christopher Isherwood (1904-1986) is the author of Christopher and His Kind,The Condor and the Cows, Down There on a Visit, Kathleen and Christopher, Lions and Shadows, A Meeting by the River, My Guru and His Disciple, Prater Violet, A Single Man, and The World in the Evening. A selection of his finest writing is collected in Where Joy Resides. 296 pages | 5 7/8 x 9 | 1999 |
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$17.95 Paper