Christopher Isherwood (1904-1986) was a British-born American writer who worked in many genres, including fiction, drama, film, travel, and autobiography. He was especially esteemed for his stories about Berlin in the early 1930s.

The son of a career military officer, Christopher Isherwood was born in High Lane, Cheshire, England, on August 26, 1904. He attended the Repton School from 1919 to 1922 and Cambridge University from 1924 to 1925. His university year was significant because it was at Cambridge that he met Wystan Hugh Auden, with whom he later collaborated on several literary projects, and because it was there that he became a practicing homosexual, an orientation which played an important role in his personal and artistic life.

Leaving the university without a degree, Isherwood worked for a year as the secretary to French violinist Andre Mangeot and as a private tutor in London. In his spare hours he worked on his first novel...