A Meeting by the River was published by Simon & Schuster in 1967. Oliver is a young Englishman about to take his final vows (sannyasa) at a Hindu monastery in India. His brother Patrick, a successful publisher, arrives to talk him out of it. The novel is told entirely through letters, diary entries, and interior monologues — Patrick’s worldly, seductive arguments for returning to “real life” set against Oliver’s deepening commitment to renunciation.
The brothers represent two sides of Isherwood himself — the worldly artist who loves pleasure, sex, and success, and the spiritual seeker who spent decades studying Vedanta under Swami Prabhavananda at the Vedanta Society of Southern California. Isherwood had been a devotee of Vedanta since the early 1940s, and this novel is his most sustained attempt to dramatize the conflict between the spiritual and the worldly life.
Patrick is the more vivid character — his letters are witty, manipulative, and self-aware — but Oliver’s diary entries, which record his struggles with doubt, desire, and the terrifying possibility that his vocation is genuine, are the novel’s emotional center. Isherwood does not resolve the conflict: the novel ends with both brothers changed but neither converted, and the question of whether Oliver’s renunciation is wisdom or delusion is left open.
Collecting A Meeting by the River
First edition (Simon & Schuster, New York, 1967): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $80–$200
- Very good/very good: $30–$80
- UK first (Methuen, 1967): $60–$150