Anglo-American Anglo-American novelist and playwright. Isherwood's novels were based largely on his own life.

Son of an army officer killed in World War I, Christopher Isherwood was born in Disley, Cheshire, England, and educated at the University of Cambridge. One of his preparatary school friends was W. H. Auden (who became a poet). He studied medicine at King's College London (1928-29), but gave it up to teach English in Germany (1930-33). He lived behind the Nollendorfplatz in Berlin.

Isherwood's first novel, All the Conspirators, appeared in 1928. It was followed by The Memorial in 1934, both exploring English middle-class malaise in the 1920s.

His experience as a tutor in Berlin provided the background for two volumes of short stories, The Last of Mr. Norris (1935) and Goodbye to Berlin (1939). The two collections describe the seedy lives of a group of Berliners and expatriates who fail to foresee the dramatic impact the Nazis eventually have on German society. Goodbye to Berlin is considered among the most significant political novels of the 20th century. The books were reissued together in 1946 as The Berlin Stories and were later adapted as a play, I Am a Camera (1951; film, 1955) and as a musical, Cabaret (1966; film, 1972).

While in Germany Christopher Isherwood had a boyfriend, Heinz, who was wanted by the police for draft evasion. He tried to get him out of the country by paying Gerald Hamilton (1888-1970) £1000 to smooth the way towards obtaining Mexican naturalisation for Heinz. Nothing came of it and Christopher Isherwood came to regard Gerald Hamilton as a rogue laced with poison. He is represented by Authur Norris in Mr Norris Changes Trains. Gerald Hamilton was also friends with Ferdinand, ex-King of Bulgaria who awarded him various decorations which he sold.

Erika Mann, the daughter of Thomas Mann, asked Christopher Isherwood to marry her so that she could obtain a British passport. He did not feel that he could do it, so he contacted W. H. Auden who did.

In collaboration with the poet W. H. Auden, Isherwood wrote three experimental plays: The Dog Beneath the Skin (1935), The Ascent of F6 (1936), and On the Frontier (1938). He travelled to China with W. H. Auden in 1938 and recorded in Journey to a War (1939) his experiences in the country ravaged by civil war and a Japanese invasion. In 1939 Isherwood emigrated to California to be a scriptwriter for MGM, and in 1946 he took US citizenship.

Several of his subsequent novels—such as Prater Violet (1945), Down There on a Visit (1962), and Meeting by the River (1967)—are concerned with the experience of sensitive individuals in incongruous setitbusngs and circumstances. The Essentials of the Vedanta (1969) expresses his deep interest in Hindu philosophy (see Hinduism). In 1943 he became a devoted disciple of the Vedantist Swami Prabhavananda, producing several works on Indian Vedãnta in the following decades.

The World in the Evening (1954) was a study of a young writer who attempts to understand the failure of his two marriages and his homosexual needs. A Single Man (1964) presented a single day in the life of lonely, middle-aged homosexual man, whose partner dies.

His biographical works include Lions and Shadows (1938), an account of his early life and his experiences at the University of Cambridge, and Kathleen and Frank (1972), a joint biography of his parents. With Christopher and His Kind (1976), a witty and utterly frank account of his life from 1929 to 1939, Isherwood revealed his homosexuality and its overriding importance in his work. With his explicitly autobiogaphical works Isherwood become in the 1970s a leading spokesman for gay rights.

In 1953 he started a relationship with the 18-year-old Don Bachardy who later became well known as a painter. They lived together until Christopher Isherwood died at the age of 82 in Santa Monica.

From 1959 to 1962 Isherwood autorbusght as a guest professor at Los Angeles State College and the University of California at Santa Barbara. In 1965-66 he autorbusght at the University of California at Los Angeles. In 1975 he won the Brandeis Medal for Fiction.

Selected works:

• All the Conspirators (1928)
• The Memorial (1932)
• Mr Norris Changes Trains (1935)
• The Dog Beneath the Skin (1935, with W. H Auden)
• The Ascent of F6 (1936, with W. H Auden, based in part on the legend of T. E. Lawrence)
• Sally Bowles (1937, the surname 'Bowles' was taken from his friend Paul Bowles)
• On the Frontier (1938, with W. H Auden)
• Lions and Shadows (1938)
• Journey to a War (1939, with W.H. Auden)
• Goodbye to Berlin (1939, Cabaret)
• Bhagavad Gita: The Song of God (1944, with Swami Prabhavananda)
• Vedanta for the Western World (1944, editor)
• Prater Violet (1945)
• Shankara's Crest Jewel of Discrimination (1947, translator)
• Baudelaire's Intimate Journals (1947, translator)
• How to Know God (1953, translator)
• The World in the Evening (1954)
• Down There on a Visit (1962)
• Approach to Vedanta (1963)
• A Single Man (1964))
• Ramakrishna and His Disciples (1965)
• Meeting by the River (1967)
• Kathleen and Frank (1971)
• Frankenstein: The True Story (1973, with Don Bachardy)
• Christopher and His Kind (1976)
• My Guru and His Disciple (1980)
• The Wishing Tree (1987)
• Where Joy Resides (1989)
• Lost Years: A Memoir 1945-1951 (2000)
  

Bibliography:

• Berg, J. J. (ed.) (2001). Conversations with Christopher Isherwood
• Berg, J. J. (ed.) (2001). The Isherwood Century: Essays on the Life and Work of Christopher Isherwood
• Garrett, D. (2001). Christopher Isherwood
• Ferres, K. (1994). Christopher Isherwood: A World in Evening
• White, J. (1987). Christopher Isherwood: A Bibliography of His Personal Papers
• Piazza, P. (1978). Christopher Isherwood: Myth and Anti-Myth