Christopher Isherwood: A Critical Biography

This award-winning biography unravels the ways in which Christopher Isherwood's autobiographically-based fiction connects with his own life and experiences. It argues that some of his later novels are just as powerful as the Berlin novels which made him famous. Using interviews with Isherwood and others and citing from Isherwood's unpublished letters at the time, Finney shows how the events in Isherwood's life became transformed into his fiction. Interspersed chapters offer informed critical analysis of all his major work up to 1978. This biography won the James Tait Black Memorial Award for non-fiction in 1979. It was also chosen by PhilipToynbee as one of his best three books of the year in the Observer.