| Synopsis: |
Christopher Isherwood settled in California in 1939 and spent the war years working in Hollywood studios and teaching English to European refugees. When the war ended he careered into a life of frantic socialising, increasing dissipation, anxiety and despair. For nearly half a decade he all but ceased to write fiction and he abandoned his lifelong habit of keeping a diary.This is Isherwood's account, reconstructed nearly thirty years later, of his day-to-day experiences in London, New York and Santa Monica. Begun in 1971, in a post-sixties atmosphere of liberation, Lost Years includes explicit details of his romantic and sexual relationships during the 1940s and unveils a hidden and sometimes shocking way of life, shared with friends, acquaintances and colleagues - many of whom were themselves well-known writers, artists, actors and filmmakers.Isherwood never prepared Lost Years for publication because he rapidly became caught up in writing the bestselling book which established him as a hero of gay liberation, Christopher and His Kind.Lost Years shows Isherwood both as a private being trying to make sense of the events of his life and as social chronicler, portraying the energy and, occasionally, abandon of the post-war years. |