My Father's Fortune : A Life

Author(s): Michael Frayn

General Fiction

'An unknown place.' This was what Michael Frayn's children called the shadowy landscape of the past from which their family had emerged. In this book he sets out to rediscover that lost land before all trace of it finally disappears beyond recall. As he tries to see it through the eyes his parents and the others who shaped his life, he comes to realise how little he ever knew or understood about them. This is above all the story of his father, the quick-witted boy from a poor and struggling family, who overcame so many disadvantages and shouldered so many burdens to make a go of his life; who found happiness, had it snatched away from him in a single instant, and in the end, after many difficulties, perhaps found it again. Father and son were in some odd ways ridiculously alike, in others ridiculously different; and the journey back down the corridors of time is sometimes comic, sometimes painful, as Michael Frayn comes to see how much he has inherited from his father - and makes one or two surprising discoveries about both of them along the way ...

$24.99 AUD


Add to Wishlist


Product Information

A warm, funny and heartbreaking childhood memoir from one of Britain's best-loved writers.

Shortlisted for Costa Biography Award 2010.

After the brilliant plays Both comic and cerebral and the subtle novels, one of our best contemporary writers has made the family memoir his own. Not a line, still less a thought, is stale or predictable. Anne Chisholm, "The Daily Telegraph " Genuinely delving, yet decently guarded, "My Father's Fortune" is often very funny and soaked in a wistful sort of melancholy that deepens into a compelling sadness. Frayn has written books that make a bigger bang, but none that is so touching. Andrew Motion, "The Guardian"

Michael Frayn was born in London in 1933 and began his career as a journalist on the Guardian and the Observer. His novels include Towards the End of the Morning, and A Landing on the Sun. Headlong (1999) was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, while his most recent novel, Spies (2002), won the Whitbread Novel Award. His fifteen plays range from Noises Off to Copenhagen and most recently Afterlife. He is married to the writer Claire Tomalin.

General Fields

  • : 9780571270590
  • : Faber and Faber
  • : Faber and Faber
  • : 0.22
  • : July 2011
  • : 198mm X 126mm X 18mm
  • : United Kingdom
  • : November 2011
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : Illustrations
  • : 272
  • : 828.91409
  • : 1
  • : Paperback
  • : Michael Frayn