A Single Man
  • Published: 1 February 2010
  • ISBN: 9780099548829
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 160
  • RRP: $29.99

A Single Man

Formats & editions
Paperback
2 Aug 2010
Paperback
1 Feb 2010
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A Single Man is an exclusive Vintage Classic that has been made into a film starring Julianne Moore and Colin Firth and directed by Tom Ford.

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.
  • Published: 1 February 2010
  • ISBN: 9780099548829
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 160
  • RRP: $29.99
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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.

portrait photo of Christopher Isherwood

Also by Christopher Isherwood

The Animals
My Guru and His Disciple
The Condor and the Cows
Kathleen and Frank
Lions and Shadows
Down There on a Visit
The World in the Evening
See all

Praise for A Single Man

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

An absolutely devastating, unnerving, brilliant book

Stephen Spender

Very sad and yet at times wildly funny

The Daily Telegraph

Lyrical and intensely moving

Daily Telegraph

Angry and affecting

Independent on Sunday
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