A Single Man
The author's favorite of his own novels, now back in print!
When A Single Man was originally published, it shocked many by its frank, sympathetic, and moving portrayal of a gay man in midlife. George, the protagonist, is adjusting to life on his own after the sudden death of his partner, and determines to persist in the routines of his daily life. An Englishman and a professor living in suburban Southern California, he is an outsider in every way, and his internal reflections and interactions with others reveal a man who loves being alive despite everyday injustices and loneliness. Wry, suddenly manic, constantly funny, surprisingly sad, this novel catches the texture of life itself.
A testimony to Isherwood’s undiminished brilliance as a novelist.
Anthony Burgess
When A Single Man was originally published, it shocked many by its frank, sympathetic, and moving portrayal of a gay man in midlife. George, the protagonist, is adjusting to life on his own after the sudden death of his partner, and determines to persist in the routines of his daily life: the course of A Single Man spans twenty-four hours in an ordinary day. An Englishman and a professor living in suburban Southern California, he is an outsider in every way, and his internal reflections and interactions with others reveal a man who loves being alive despite everyday injustices and loneliness. Wry, suddenly manic, constantly funny, surprisingly sad, this novel catches the texture of life itself.
A testimony to Isherwood’s undiminished brilliance as a novelist.
Anthony Burgess
An absolutely devastating, unnerving, brilliant book.
Stephen Spender
Just as his Prater Violet is the best novel I know about the movies, Isherwood's A Single Man, published in 1964, is one of the first and best novels of the modern gay liberation movement.
Edmund White
This fortunate reissue enables modern readers to access this novel, which for it’s time, gave a shockingly sympathetic portrayal of George, a homosexual protagonist.
Lavender
Isherwood captured the truth, preserved it, and now he have a way to connect mid-20th-century life to 21st-century life.
The Chronicle Review
Composed in a third-person stream-of-consciousness, A Single Man is the pluperfect example of what Gore Vidal calls the “constant clarity of prose style” that is Ishwerood’s hallmark.
LA Weekly
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My Guru and His Disciple
The author’s fascinating account of his thirty-year spiritual quest, now back in print!
