About the Book:

HARD TO FIND BOOK, only a very limited number of copies are still available.

The celebrated English writer's first novel about Americans and their values.

Against the backdrop of World War II, The World in the Evening charts the emotional development of Stephen Monk, an aimless Englishman living in California. At a party in the Hollywood Hills, Stephen finds his wife in the arms of another man. Betrayed and furious, he packs his belongings and returns to the small Pennsylvania Quaker town he was born in. There he begins to retrace the steps that have brought him to this crisis. He is reminded of his own betrayals and of his prewar affair with a younger man during a visit to the Canary Islands. But most of all, the memory of his lost love, Elizabeth Rydal, haunts him. Can he forgive his wife, and most importantly, himself? The world traveler comes to a gradual understanding of himself and of his newly adopted homeland.

When first published in 1953, The World in the Evening was notable for its clear-eyed depiction of European and American mores, sexuality, and religion. Today, readers herald Isherwood's frank portrayal of bisexuality and his early appreciation of low and high camp.

What people say:

"By reissuing these books by Christopher Isherwood, the University of Minnesota Press makes them available to a new generation of readers. All of Isherwood's books have a strong autobiographical element, so any one of them connects to the whole of his fascinating life, and no one should have to miss a moment of it." — Don Bachardy

"Isherwood is the best prose writer in English." — Gore Vidal

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.