MR Isherwood Changes Trains

British expatriate writer Christopher Isherwood (1904-1986) moved to America prior to the Second World War and lived more than half his life in California, writing for the Hollywood studios. Famous initially for the stories he wrote during the rise of the Nazis, he attracted a second wave of interest in the 1970s with his 'out' autobiography 'Christopher and His Kind' (1976). But much less is known about Isherwood's writing during his forty years as a student of a guru from the Ramakrishna Order.

In Mr Isherwood Changes Trains, Victor Marsh interrogates the assumptions and prejudices that have combined to disparage the sincerity of Isherwood's religious life. Marsh elucidates those features of Vedanta philosophy that enabled Isherwood to integrate the various aspects of his dharma: his vocation as a writer, and a spirituality not predicated on the repudiation of his sexuality. Marsh details the heartfelt search for a 'home-self' that found expression in later works such as 'My Guru and his disciple' and in what is seen as Isherwood's finest novel, 'A single man' (1964).