The Memorial
  • Published: 1 July 2012
  • ISBN: 9780099561125
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 272
  • RRP: $35.00
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The Memorial

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Isherwood's witty first foray into autobiographical fiction recalls the post-war dissolution of traditional English families.

The First World War is over. Eric Vernon is on the cusp of adulthood. Tall, bony and awkward he finds himself torn between a desire to emulate his heroic father, who led a life of quiet sacrifice, and resentment toward his father's roguish friend Edward Blake, who survived the war only to throw himself into gay life in Berlin. With subtle wit and trademark irony, Isherwood's second novel evokes a society in flux.
  • Published: 1 July 2012
  • ISBN: 9780099561125
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 272
  • RRP: $35.00
Categories:
Share…

About the author

Christopher Isherwood

Christopher Isherwood (1904-1986) was one of the most celebrated writers of his generation. He left Cambridge without graduating, briefly studied medicine and then turned to writing his first novels, All the Conspirators and The Memorial. Between 1929 and 1939 he lived mainly abroad, spending four years in Berlin and writing the novels Mr Norris Changes Trains and Goodbye to Berlin on which the musical Cabaret was based. He moved to America in 1939, becoming a US citizen in 1946, and wrote another five novels, including Down There on a Visit and A Single Man, a travel book about South America and a biography of the Indian mystic Ramakrishna. In the late 1960s and '70s he turned to autobiographical works: Kathleen and Frank, Christopher and His Kind, My Guru and His Disciple and October, one month of his diary with drawings by Don Bachardy.

portrait photo of Christopher Isherwood

Also by Christopher Isherwood

Goodbye to Berlin
A Single Man
The Animals
My Guru and His Disciple
The Condor and the Cows
Kathleen and Frank
Lions and Shadows
See all

Praise for The Memorial

A genuine interpretation of the times

Frank Kermode

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

Guardian

Christopher Isherwood is back in vogue

Independent

That young man holds the future of the English novel in his hands

Somerset W. Maugham