In November 1929, Christopher Isherwood - determined to become a 'permanent foreigner' - packed a rucksack and two suitcases and left England on a one-way ticket for Berlin. With incredible candour and wit, Isherwood recalls the decadence of Berlin's night scene and his route to sexual liberation. As the Nazis rise to power, Isherwood describes his dramatic struggle to save his partner Heinz from the persecution the Third Reich.

《瑜伽经》 这部关于冥想的经典已经经受住了时间的考验。虽然它写于约两千年前，但印度的学者、哲学家和宗教导师仍然认为它是冥想修习之切实稳妥并合乎道德的指导。它的首要特征在于，尽管文本明白晓畅，但仍然解释了最为深奥的秘密；它既适合于绝对的初学者，也适合于道行很高的修行者。它的另一个特征是，文本并没有抬高任何一种特殊的宗教学说。读者可以是印度教徒、佛教徒、基督徒、无神论者或者其他任何信仰的信徒。文本的目的，是帮助读者完全理解自己的心的结构，控制心意，进入更深的意识层面。
瑜伽是一门亲证的学问，是超越怨恨对峙的学问，是引导人的心灵通向自由和平的学问，可以指导人们摆脱诸多幻相和人生烦恼。在学习瑜伽中，人们有必要了解瑜伽的内在思想，特别有必要了解瑜伽最重要经典《瑜伽经》。《瑜伽经》的原文只有几千言，但微言大义，千百年来，各种注释浩如烟海，从中衍生出和影响过众多的哲学及宗教流派。这本《瑜伽经》的注释本，可以说是当代的一部权威注释本，因为其主要的注释者就是当代这个领域内的权威学者。
这是一本集各国众多圣者、学者、官员、朋友以及未知者之智慧和精力而完成的书。这本书对形形色色的瑜伽修习方式据以产生的瑜伽思想本身进行的全面系统、客观严肃、通俗易懂、形象生动并富有时代特征和当代气息的诠释，“对于各种瑜伽的修习者从精神层面上理解瑜伽精髓从而提高修习的质量和效果，很有益处”；对于生活在这个复杂而紧张的世界里的形形色色的人们，也很有价值：它将引领我们走向心灵的和平和宁静。
本书附赠瑜伽经（梵英中对照）一册和现在开始讲解瑜伽（俞亮唱诵）光盘一张。

Christopher Isherwood originally intended Down There on a Visit to be part of The Lost, the unfinished epic novel that would also incorporate his famous Berlin Stories. Tracing many of the same themes as that earlier work, this novel is a bemused, sometimes acid portrait of people caught in private sexual hells of their own making. Its four episodes are connected by four narrators. All are called "Christopher Isherwood, " but each is a different character inhabiting a new setting: Berlin in 1928, the Greek Isles in 1933, London in 1938, and California in 1940. Down There on a Visit is a major work that shows Isherwood at the height of his literary powers.

Here, meine Damen und Herren, is Chrisopther Isherwood's brilliant farewell to a city which was not only buildings, streets and people, but was also a state of mind which will never come again.
In linked short stories, he says goodbye to Sally Bowles, to Fraulein Schroeder, to pranksters, perverts, political manipulators; to the very, very guilty and to the dwindling band of innocents. It is goodbye to a Berlin wild, wicked, breathtaking, decadent beyond belief and already - in the years between the wars - welcoming death in through the door, though more with a wink than an whimper.
~from the back cover

A classic of 20th-century fiction, The Berlin Stories inspired the Broadway musical and Oscar-winning film Cabaret. First published in the 1930s, The Berlin Stories contains two astonishing related novels, The Last of Mr. Norris and Goodbye to Berlin, which are recognized today as classics of modern fiction. Isherwood magnificently captures 1931 Berlin: charming, with its avenues and cafés; marvelously grotesque, with its nightlife and dreamers; dangerous, with its vice and intrigue; powerful and seedy, with its mobs and millionaires—this is the period when Hitler was beginning his move to power. The Berlin Stories is inhabited by a wealth of characters: the unforgettable Sally Bowles, whose misadventures in the demimonde were popularized on the American stage and screen by Julie Harris in I Am A Camera and Liza Minnelli in Cabaret; Mr. Norris, the improbable old debauchee mysteriously caught between the Nazis and the Communists; plump Fräulein Schroeder, who thinks an operation to reduce the scale of her Büste might relieve her heart palpitations; and the distinguished and doomed Jewish family, the Landauers.