plays, short stories, screenplays, poems, novels and nonfiction. Though he is perhaps best known as the author of such works as The Berlin Stories (later made into the hit play and movie, “Cabaret”), his involvement in the Vedanta movement in California from the 1940s through the 1980s left a permanent imprint on the cultural landscape...The English version of the Song of God: Bhagavad Gita was Isherwood's crowning achievement." - Mark Hawthorne, Vedanta’s Western Poet, Hinduism Today, September 1, 1999 [From a critique concerning translations] "A translation of literary worth...seemed preferable to a simon-pure translation...As a master translator, Edward Fitzgerald, put it: “Better a live sparrow than a stuffed eagle.” ...In violation of this principle, Mr. Y. has decided to use the Edwin Arnold translation of the Bhagavad Gita rather than—say—the Christopher Isherwood-Swami Prabhavananda version. In my opinion...there is no comparison between the ponderous cadences of the first, and the clean lucidity of the second." - The New York Times, November 11, 1956 "The translation, in poetry and prose, is the celebrated one by Christopher Isherwood and Swami Prabhavananda…the very purpose of life in Hindu terms becomes luminously clear." - Paul Kresh, The New York Times, May 10, 1981 Reviews of the 2023 Edition "Translations come in many hues and fulfill different needs. Bhagavad Gita: The Song of God, the translation by Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood, cuts to the chase by focusing on the essential teaching in every verse—and does this in both poetry and prose that is as elegant as it is insightful. The book effortlessly captures the beauty and the rhythm of the Gita." - Swami Tyagananda, Hindu Chaplain, Harvard and MIT, 2022 "The ageless wisdom of the Gita will never be brought into classic English prose with greater clarity, humanity and selflessness than in this priceless rendition. What a joy to have it brought to us afresh in this new edition, Isherwood’s rare elegance married to his beloved teacher’s wise command of the scriptures." Pico Iyer, Author of Video Night in Kathmandu, The Lady and the Monk, and The Global Soul. Contributor to Time, Harper's, New York Review of Books, and The New York Times. He also taught at Harvard and Princeton, 2022 "As World War II raged and the dissolution of the British Empire drew near, an Indian and an Englishman, both disillusioned radicals, collaborated in Hollywood on this singular translation. In Vedanta, they had found