Overview
Originally published in 1945, Prater Violet is a stingingly satirical novel about the film industry. It centers around the production of the vacuous fictional melodrama Prater Violet, set in nineteenth-century Vienna, providing ironic counterpoint to tragic events as Hitler annexes the real Vienna of the 1930s. The novel features the vivid portraits of imperious, passionate, and witty Austrian director Friedrich Bergmann and his disciple, a genial young screenwriter-the fictionalized Christopher Isherwood.About the Author:
A major figure in both twentieth-century fiction and the gay rights movement, Christopher Isherwood (19041986) is also the author of A Single Man, Down There on a Visit, Lions and Shadows, The Memorial, The World in the Evening, and A Meeting by the River, all available in paperback editions from the University of Minnesota Press.
A stinging satirical novel about the film industry which ironically counterpoints the tragic events of the world stage as Hitler's lengthening shadow falls over the real Vienna of the thirties.
Synopsis
Isherwood's story centers on the production of the vacuous fictional melodrama Prater Violet, set in nineteenth-century Vienna, providing ironic counterpoint to tragic events as Hitler annexes the real Vienna of the 1930s. The novel features the vivid portraits of imperious, passionate, and witty Austrian director Friedrich Bergmann and his disciple, a genial young screenwriter: the fictionalized Christopher Isherwood.
Editorials
Washington Post
“Isherwood freely discusses a dimension of his experience previously repressed in his fiction, his homosexuality. And in telling the truth about himself, he ultimately transcends the limits of autobiography to write what is, in effect, another novel.”—Paul Piazza, The Washington Post