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A Single Man

  • Imprint: Vintage Classics

  • ISBN: 9780099541288

  • Length: 176  Pages

  • Dimensions: 198mm x 12mm x 129mm

  • Weight: 127g

  • RRP: £8.99

A Single Man

Isherwood's short, poignant novel is a tender and wistful love story

Celebrated as a masterpiece from its first publication, A Single Man is the story of George, an English professor in suburban California left heartbroken after the death of his lover, Jim. With devastating clarity and humour, Isherwood shows George's determination to carry on, evoking the unexpected pleasures of life as well as the soul's ability to triumph over loneliness and alienation.

'A virtuoso piece of work...courageous...powerful' Sunday Times

'This mix of humour and stoicism in the face of pent-up grief is essential Isherwood' Guardian

  • Imprint: Vintage Classics

  • ISBN: 9780099541288

  • Length: 176  Pages

  • Dimensions: 198mm x 12mm x 129mm

  • Weight: 127g

  • RRP: £8.99

Reviews

  • The best prose writer in English

    Gore Vidal

  • A virtuoso piece of work...courageous...powerful

    Sunday Times

  • His key post-war work. A quarter-century ahead of its time in its portrayal of a quotidian homosexual life, it inspired a generation of gay writers in Britain and the US

    Independent

  • Lyrical and intensely moving

    Daily Telegraph

  • A testimony to Isherwood's undiminished brilliance as a novelist

    Anthony Burgess

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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.

Christopher Isherwood

Read more

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Features

Releasing The Animals: bringing Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy's relationship to life

Katherine Bucknell edited The Animals, a collection of Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy's love letters. She charts the journey to bringing them to life in a podcast starring Simon Callow and Alan Cumming

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