Editions

A Single Man

  • Imprint: Vintage Classics

  • ISBN: 9780099548829

  • Length: 160  Pages

  • Dimensions: 198mm x 10mm x 129mm

  • Weight: 117g

  • RRP: £8.99

A Single Man

In this brilliantly perceptive novel, a middle aged professor living in California is alienated from his students by differences in age and nationality, and from the rest of society by his homosexuality. Isherwood explores the depths of the human soul and its ability to triumph over loneliness, alienation and loss.

  • Imprint: Vintage Classics

  • ISBN: 9780099548829

  • Length: 160  Pages

  • Dimensions: 198mm x 10mm x 129mm

  • Weight: 117g

  • RRP: £8.99

Reviews

  • His key postwar 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

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

    Guardian

  • His own highly personal form of fiction [is one] in which simple sentences strike a note of great intimacy with the reader as if to a close personal friend, and a sense of total honesty is sought. This style, witty, observant, nostalgic, exact, was Isherwood's great contribution to modern literature

    Financial Times

  • He had dazzling talents as a writer. His literary production was pre-eminent for its wit, humour, charm of style and narrative skill... A Single Man can be almost considered as his masterpiece

    John Lehmann, Guardian

  • Very sad and yet at times wildly funny

    The Daily Telegraph

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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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