Isherwood’s story centers on the production of the vacuous fictional melodrama Prater Violet, set in nineteenth-century Vienna, providing ironic counterpoint to tragic events as Hitler annexes the real Vienna of the 1930s. The novel features the vivid portraits of imperious, passionate, and witty Austrian director Friedrich Bergmann and his disciple, a genial young screenwriter: the fictionalized Christopher Isherwood.
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"This would have been a three star book. It's short and though engaging Isherwood keeps his cards close in, never letting the emotions really rise, never letting the drama really build. The last few pages though completely sold it for me. He opened it up and turned it inside out. bravo." — Hannah (4 out of 5 stars)
"This would have been a three star book. It's short and though engaging Isherwood keeps his cards close in, never letting the emotions really rise, never letting the drama really build. The last few pages though completely sold it for me. He opened it up and turned it inside out. bravo."
" There's something brilliant in a quick read that can cut out all the bullshit and nail the point so clearly. "
" This is a perfect little book. One of his best. "
" Before the The Player or The Stunt Man there was Prater Violet. "
" Easy to read, enjoyable set-piece in an era of horror, where the narrator and his contemporaries appreciate or reject a refugee from Nazi-ism without ever understanding his anguish for his family left behind. "
" I fell in love with Christopher Isherwood with this book. So funny and erudite and gentle. This and "Spider Boy" by Carl Van Vechten are two of my favorite literary satires of the motion-picture business. "
" Short and interesting. There may well be depth here that I did not excavate (and because it is Isherwood and I would bet that that is the case). "
" comedic book based on Isherwood's time as a screenwriter for Ealing studios "
" Lightweight look at the movie industry in the 1930s. Entertaining but not particularly insightful. The character sketches are adequate - its the historical events, the context that give it any meaning at all. "
Christopher Isherwood (1902–1986) lived in Berlin from 1928 to 1933 and immigrated to the United States in 1939. A major figure in twentieth-century fiction and the gay rights movement, he wrote more than twenty books including A Single Man, which was adapted into a film of the same name in 2009, and a series of short stories that inspired the musical Cabaret. In 2010 his autobiography, Christopher and His Kind, was adapted into a television film by the BBC.
Paul Boehmer is an American actor best known for his numerous appearances in the Star Trek universe, in addition to Frasier, Judging Amy, Guiding Light, and All My Children. He is a 1992 Masters of Fine Arts graduate of the Professional Theater Training Program at the University of Delaware. As a narrator, Paul has won several AudioFile Earphones Awards as well as an Audie Award.
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