Christopher and his kind

Christopher and His Kind was published in 1976 as a factual memoir intended to correct the fictionalized accounts found in Isherwood's earlier Berlin Stories. Writing from a position of middle age, Isherwood sought to provide an honest, autobiographical record of his life in Berlin during the rise of the Nazi party between 1930 and 1939. The work is deeply concerned with the intersection of political upheaval and his personal discovery of his identity as a gay man, stripping away the artistic license he had previously employed in his novels.

The design and tone of the book reflect a deliberate shift toward transparency. Isherwood wanted to distinguish clearly between the character of 'Christopher Isherwood' in his fiction and his actual experiences as an expatriate writer navigating the underground subcultures of pre-war Germany. Upon its release, the memoir was widely praised for its historical insight and its candid approach to the author's homosexuality, serving as a landmark text in queer literature and a vital historical document of a vanished social landscape.