Breaking a long silence Oliver, a young Englishman, writes to his elder brother, Patrick. Oliver, the idealistic younger brother is living in a Hindu Monastery and has decided to take his final monastic vows. Patrick, a successful, long-married publisher, newly in love with a boy in Los Angeles, decides to visit Oliver to persuade him not renounce the world.

First published in 1967, A Meeting by the River exposes the complex rivalries of sibling relationships and dramatises the conflict between sexuality and spirituality.

The classical opposition between the good brother and the bad one convinces… you believe in them * Guardian *
A radiant novel of mystical devotion and worldly desire by a master of English prose * Chicago Tribune *
Brilliant, vital, challenging . . . very strange and very lovely * Book Week *

Christopher Isherwood was born in 1904. He began to write at university and later moved to Berlin, where he gave English lessons to support himself. He witnessed first hand the rise to power of Hitler and the Nazi party in Germany and some of his best works, such as Mr. Norris Changes Trains and Goodbye to Berlin, draw on these experiences. He created the character of Sally Bowles, later made famous as the heroine of the musical Cabaret. Isherwood travelled with W.H Auden to China in the late 1930s before going with him to America in 1939. He died on 4 January 1986. His novel A Single Man was recently made into an award-winning film by Tom Ford, starring Colin Firth and Julianne Moore