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A Single Man

Name: A Single Man
Author: Christopher Isherwood
ISBN: 9780374520380

by Christopher Isherwood

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Overview

When A Single Man was originally published, it shocked many by its frank, sympathetic, and moving portrayal of a gay man in midlife. George, the protagonist, is adjusting to life on his own after the sudden death of his partner, and determines to persist in the routines of his daily life; the course of A Single Man spans twenty-four hours in an ordinary day. An Englishman and a professor living in suburban Southern California, he is an outsider in every way, and his internal reflections and interactions with others reveal a man who loves being alive despite everyday injustices and loneliness.

Wry, suddenly manic, constantly funny, surprisingly sad, this novel catches the texture of life itself.

What Isherwood has caught with supreme brilliance is the texture of life itself in George's person. He is a homosexual; he sees people in terms of his own sexuality." Book Week

About the Author, Christopher Isherwood

SIMON PREBBLE, a British-born performer of considerable talent and experience, has built a successful career that spans the Atlantic. As a stage and television actor he has played in everything from soaps to Shakespeare, but it is as a veteran narrator of some 275 audio book titles that he has made his mark since coming to the U.S. in 1990. Audiofile magazine has named him a “Golden Voice” and in 2004 he was named “Narrator of the Year” by Publishers Weekly. He lives with his wife in New York.

CHRISTOPHER ISHERWOOD (1902-1986) lived in Berlin from 1928 to 1933 and immigrated to the United States in 1939. A major figure in 20th-century fiction and the gay rights movement, he wrote more than 20 books including the novels Prater Violet and a series of short stories, Goodbye to Berlin, that inspired the musical Cabaret.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly

Isherwood's resurrected classic—now a feature film—takes us to Southern California in the 1960s and into one day in the life of George, a gay, middle-aged English professor, struggling to cope with his young lover's tragic death. Simon Prebble's voice is a perfect conduit for Isherwood's lyricism, and he assumes the role of George so naturally and with such raw feeling that listeners will feel as if they are hearing the words straight from the protagonist himself, so beautifully does Prebble create George's reserve behind which surge tides of grief, rage, and bitter loneliness. A University of Minnesota paperback. (Jan.)

Library Journal

Set in 1962 Southern California, the late Isherwood's (Goodbye to Berlin) classic 1964 novel is a stream-of-consciousness, day-in-the-life portrait of George, a middle-aged college professor who must adjust to being on his own after the death of his longtime partner, Jim. Narrator Simon Prebble (www.simonprebble.com) effectively captures George's loneliness, despair, and disillusionment with his mundane affairs as he persists in his regular routines. For appreciators of serious literature; expect requests owing to Tom Ford's Oscar-nominated 2008 film adaptation. [Two other of Isherwood's works—Christopher and His Kind and Prater Violet—are also newly available on audio from this publisher.—Ed.]—Phillip Oliver, Univ. of North Alabama Lib., Florence