About the Book:
HARD
TO FIND BOOK, only a very limited number of copies are still
available.
The sequel to Berlin Stories.
The author originally intended Down
There on a Visit to be part of The
Lost, the unfinished epic novel that would also
incorporate his famous Berlin
Stories.
Tracing many of the same themes as that earlier work, this novel
is a bemused, sometimes acid portrait of people caught in private
sexual hells of their own making. Its four episodes are connected by
four narrators. All are called "Christopher Isherwood," but
each is a different character inhabiting a new setting: Berlin in
1928, the Greek Isles in 1933, London in 1938, and California in
1940. Here are the postcards home from a spiritual tourist looking
for a new mode of life as well as a new place to live while Europe,
and then the world, moves relentlessly toward war. Which of the
guides he encounters can lead him to a better future? The
businessman, the utopian, the guru, the geisha?
Down There on a Visit
is a major work that shows Christopher Isherwood at the height
of his literary powers. It is now widely regarded as the most
accomplished of his novels.
What people say:
"Stunning. I can think of no
better word." — Esquire
"In several respects this is
probably Isherwood's best novel. It offers the sheer pleasure of
writing completely personal and yet completely controlled, radiant
with observation, never wasting a word, funny and sympathetic."
— New Republic
"This excellent novel may be
the best Christopher Isherwood has written… A deeply intelligent
and quietly compelling story." — New York Times Book
Review
"This is the best of Mr.
Isherwood's novels." — The Times
(London)
"Few writers have so
unsparingly scrutinized their worlds. Down There on a Visit
is outrageous, bitter, bleak, angry, wry, revealing, infuriating, and
at times marvelously comic…. An offbeat classic." —
Saturday Review
About the Author:
Christopher Isherwood (1904-1986) was a British-born
American writer who worked in many genres, including fiction, drama,
film, travel, and autobiography. He was born in Manchester, England,
and lived in Berlin from 1929 to 1933 and immigrated to the United
States in 1939. A major figure in twentieth-century fiction and the
gay rights movement, he wrote more than twenty books.