The Berlin Stories / A Single Man / A Meeting by the River by Christopher Isherwood

Christopher Isherwood’s collected works capture a lifetime of observation, longing, and transformation. In The Berlin Stories, he portrays a decadent, crumbling Weimar Berlin on the brink of catastrophe through the eyes of an English writer and his unforgettable companions—stories that inspired the musical Cabaret. In A Single Man, he offers a haunting portrait of grief and isolation as George, a British professor in 1960s California, struggles to live through one ordinary day after the death of his partner. And in A Meeting by the River, two brothers—one a worldly filmmaker, the other a devout monk—confront the tension between spirituality and desire in India. Together, these novels reveal Isherwood’s profound understanding of identity, love, and the search for meaning across time and place.