Prater Violet
The lively novel on filmmaking, now back in print!
Originally published in 1945, 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 ironic counterpoint to tragic events as Hitler annexes the real Vienna of the 1930s. The novel features the vivid portraits of imperious, passionate, and witty Austrian director Friedrich Bergmann and his disciple, a genial young screenwriter-the fictionalized Christopher Isherwood.
Prater Violet, in my view, is one of the best short novels in English written in this century.
Stanley Kauffmann
Fiction
The lively novel on filmmaking, now back in print!
Originally published in 1945, 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 ironic counterpoint to tragic events as Hitler annexes the real Vienna of the 1930s. The novel features the vivid portraits of imperious, passionate, and witty Austrian director Friedrich Bergmann and his disciple, a genial young screenwriter-the fictionalized Christopher Isherwood.
“Prater Violet, in my view, is one of the best short novels in English written in this century." --Stanley Kauffmann
"Prater Violet is the most charming novel I have read in a long time. . . . a novel about movie writers, which is yet a novel about the life of every serious artist.” --Diana Trilling
“Prater Violet resembles the episodes in Goodbye to Berlin and keeps up the same high level of excellence.” --Edmund Wilson
ISBN 0-8166-3861-6 Paper £10.95 $14.95 COBE
144 Pages 5 1/2 x 8 1/4 April
Translation Inquiries: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, LLC
Prater Violet, in my view, is one of the best short novels in English written in this century.
Stanley Kauffmann
Prater Violet is the most charming novel I have read in a long time. . . . a novel about movie writers, which is yet a novel about the life of every serious artist.
Diana Trilling
A deliberate historical parable. Prater Violet resembles the episodes in Goodbye to Berlin and keeps up the same high level of excellence.
Edmund Wilson
At the end of the lovely, self-deprecating Prater Violet, emotion cascades into a passionate disquisition on love and death.
Bookforum
Related Publications
Where Joy Resides
A Christopher Isherwood Reader
A selection of Isherwood’s finest writing—now back in print!
Isherwood on Writing
A publishing event—Isherwood’s lectures on writing and writers, available for the first time.
Kathleen and Christopher
Christopher Isherwood’s Letters to His Mother
Isherwood’s previously unpublished letters to his mother cast his early years as a writer in a new light
A Meeting by the River
Isherwood’s final novel, bringing together his thoughts on gay identity and Eastern mysticism, now back in print.
The World in the Evening
The celebrated English writer’s first novel about Americans and their values, now back in print.
Lions and Shadows
An Education in the Twenties
The novelist’s account of his college days and early formative friendships, now back in print.
My Guru and His Disciple
The author’s fascinating account of his thirty-year spiritual quest, now back in print!
