Christopher Isherwood

Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood (August 26, 1904 - January 4, 1986), Anglo-American novelist, was born at Disley, Cheshire in the north west of England, the son of an army officer who was killed in the First World War.

At school he met W. H. Auden who became his lifelong companion. He went to Germany as a private tutor and wrote The Berlin Stories: Mr. Norris Changes Trains and Goodbye to Berlin which provided the inspiration for the play I Am A Camera and subsequently the musical Cabaret.

Auden and Isherwood emigrated first to China, then to California where he embraced Hinduism. Together with Prabhavananda he produced several Hindu scriptural translations, Vedanta essays, a biography of Sri Ramakrishna and novels, plays and screenplays, all imbued with themes and characters of Vedanta, karma, reincarnation and the Upanishadic quest.

Arriving in Hollywood in 1939, his first met George Heard, the mysticc-historian who founded his own monastery at Trubaco Canyon that was eventually gifted to the Vedanta Society. Through Heard, who was the first to discover Swami Prabhavananda and Vedanta, Isherwood joined an extraordinary band of mystic explorers that included Aldous Huxley, Bertrand Russel, Chris Wood, John Yale and Jiddu Krishnamurti. Through Huxley, Isherwood befriended the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky.

Isherwood died in Santa Monica.