The Memorial: Portrait of a Family - Softcover

Isherwood, Christopher

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0374520674 ISBN 13: 9780374520670

Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1988

Synopsis

With The Memorial, Christopher Isherwood began his lifelong work of rewriting his own experiences into witty yet almost forensic portraits of modern society. Set in the aftermath of World War I, The Memorial portrays the dissolution of a tradition-bound English family. Cambridge student Eric Vernon finds himself torn between his desire to emulate his heroic father, who led a life of quiet sacrifice before dying in the war, and his envy for his father’s great friend Edward Blake, who survived the war only to throw himself into gay life in Berlin and the pursuit of meaningless relationships.
Published in 1932, when Isherwood was twenty-eight years old, The Memorial is the immediate precursor to the first volume of the famous Berlin Stories, but it stand in its own right as the first book in which Isherwood really found his literary voice.

About this title

Review

"The best prose writer in English." --Gore Vidal, "The New York Review of Books"

"A genuine interpretation of the times." --Frank Kermode

"That young man holds the future of the English novel in his hands." --W. Somerset Maugham

"His novels and nonfiction now all seem to be chapters of one enormous work in which he is the major character." --"The Guardian"

"The best prose writer in English." -- Gore Vidal, "The New York Review of Books"

"Dazzling . . . Pre-eminent for its wit, humour, charm of style and narrative skill." --John Lehmann, "The Guardian"

The best prose writer in English. "Gore Vidal, The New York Review of Books"

Dazzling . . . Pre-eminent for its wit, humour, charm of style and narrative skill. "John Lehmann, The Guardian""

"The best prose writer in English." --Gore Vidal, The New York Review of Books

"Dazzling . . . Pre-eminent for its wit, humour, charm of style and narrative skill." --John Lehmann, The Guardian

From the Publisher

A lively, ironic portrayal of England in the 1920's.
With The Memorial, Christopher Isherwood began his lifelong work of rewriting his own experiences into witty yet almost forensic portraits of modern society. Set in the aftermath of World War I, The Memorial portrays the dissolution of a tradition-bound English family. Cambridge student Eric Vernon finds himself torn between his desire to emulate his heroic father, who led a life of quiet sacrifice before dying in the war, and his envy for his father’s great friend Edward Blake, who survived the war only to throw himself into gay life in Berlin and the pursuit of meaningless relationships.

"Only now that Isherwood is dead can the pattern be seen clearly in a life that ranged restlessly from Oxbridge skeptic to Hindu disciple, from literary collaborator with W. H. Auden to Boswell of prewar Britain and postwar Hollywood. . . . His novels and nonfiction now all seem to be chapters of one enormous work in which he is the major character." The Guardian

"A genuine interpretation of the times." Frank Kermode

About this edition

• Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux
• Publication date: 1988
• ISBN 10: 0374520674
• ISBN 13: 9780374520670
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 294