In the Darkroom by Susan Faludi
“In the summer of 2004 I set out to investigate someone I scarcely knew, my father. The project began with a grievance, the grievance of a daughter whose parent had absconded from her life. I was in pursuit of a scofflaw, an artful dodger who had skipped out on so many things – obligation, affection, culpability, contrition. I was preparing an indictment, amassing discovery for a trial. But somewhere along the line, the prosecutor became a witness…” So begins Susan Faludi’s extraordinary inquiry into the meaning of identity in the modern world and her own haunted family saga.
When the feminist writer learned that her 76-year-old father – long estranged and living in Hungary – had undergone sex reassignment surgery, that investigation would turn personal and urgent. How was this new parent who claimed to be ‘a complete woman now’ connect to the silent, explosive and ultimately violent father that she had known, the photographer who’d built his career on the alteration of images? Faludi chases that mystery into the recesses of her suburban childhood and her father’s many previous incarnations: American dad, Alpine mountaineer, swashbuckling adventurer in the Amazon outback, Jewish fugitive in Holocaust Budapest.
When the author travels to Hungary to reunite with her father, she drops into a labyrinth of dark histories and dangerous politics in a country hell-bent on repressing its past and constructing a fanciful – and virulent – nationhood. The search for identity that has transfixed our century was proving as treacherous for nations as for individuals. Faludi’s struggle to come to grips with her father’s reinvented self takes her across borders – historical, political, religious, sexual – to bring her face to face with the question of the age: Is identity something you ‘choose’ or is it the very thing that you can’t escape?
About the Author
Susan Faludi is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and theauthor of ‘The Terror Dream’, ‘Stiffed’, and ‘Backlash’, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction. A former reporter for The Wall Street Journal, she has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times, Harper’s, and The Baffler, among other publications.
Paperback | 480 pages
153 x 234 x 32mm | 530g
14 Jun 2016
HarperCollins Publishers
William Collins
London, United Kingdom
English
0008193509
9780008193508
Condition: Very Good
A book that does not look new and has been read but is in excellent condition. Very minimal damage to the cover, including very minimal scuff marks along the edges. No missing or damaged pages, no creases or tears, and no underlining/highlighting of text or writing in the margins. Very minimal wear and tear.