PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
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.
In Isherwood's work, a magic potion of history and invention, the voice is clear, and, no matter how many times we hear it, it always seems to be speaking for the first time.--Howard Moss The New York Times Book Review Sally Bowles took center stage in the book's musical adaptation, Cabaret, but the theatrical version can't match the power and richness of the original.-- Time (100 Best English-Language Novels of the 20th-Century)
