Biographer Katherine Bucknell on Christopher Isherwood's Odyssey from Weimar Berlin to California

Send us Fan MailWhat can we learn from Weimar Germany and its rapid unraveling in the 1930s? Lately that question has gained more urgency as the US turns away from the trans-Atlantic alliance that has underpinned European security for the past 80 years. For Katherine Bucknell, no writer was better placed than Christopher Isherwood for understanding the speed with which a country can slide into autocracy. It was his book Goodbye to Berlin that became the basis for the musical, Cabaret. Without Isherwood, no Sally Bowles. But the author’s legacy stretches far beyond Berlin, encompassing gay liberation, spiritual enlightenment, and what may be the 20th century’s most enduring May-December relationship–with his long-time partner Don Bachardy. Now Bucknell,  editor of Isherwood’s voluminous journals and letters, has taken her epic knowledge of the writer and written Christopher Isherwood, Inside Out, an 800-page biography befitting such a lion of literature. In this episode of Shelf Life we discuss the biographer’s craft, and why Isherwood’s slim novel, Prater Violet, resonates down the years.