Christopher Isherwood was only twenty-one when he began his first novel, All the Conspirators, in 1926; it was published in England two years later. In his introduction to the first American edition (published by New Directions in 1958), the author explained: " All the Conspirators] records a minor engagement in what Shelley calls 'the great war between the old and young.'" In many ways this novel (like the classic Berlin Stories) is a "period piece"...