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.