A Meeting by the River by Christopher Isherwood

Isherwood’s “A Meeting by the River” is an epistolary novel consisting mainly of a conversation between two brothers who have pursued different life paths. The story reveals, by also including journal entries and letters to a few other people, the layers of deception that occur between people and perhaps also within.

Two English brothers meet, after a long separation, in India. Oliver, the idealistic younger brother, prepares to take his final vows as a Hindu monk. Patrick, a successful publisher with a wife and children in London and a male lover in California, has publicly admired his brother’s convictions while privately criticizing his choices.