Lost Years: A Memoir, 1945-1951

Christopher Isherwood settled in California in 1939 and spent the war years writing for the Hollywood studios. By 1945, he had all but ceased to write fiction and even abandoned his habit of keeping a diary. Instead, he embarked on a half decade of frantic socializing and drinking.

Looking back from the 1970s, he recreated these years from memory and from the notes he had made in his pocket date books. The result is the remarkably honest mixture of private and social history in this book.

“. .. a master of translucent prose, the events and people of these years seem to be described by a narrator as perceptive as he is unobtrusive…His writing soon becomes addictive as one self-disclosure follows another.” THE TIMES

“…a journal not only unusually objective but in parts shockingly frank.” SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY

“His diaries are the basis of all his creative work, and LOST YEARS is the most revealing so far.” HARPERS AND QUEEN