Allen & Unwin My Father's Fortune book Biography English Paperback 272 pages

A delightful and uncommonly honest memoir of Michael Frayn's father and of his own childhood, written in the spirit of enquiry that so characterises one of our most distinguished and cherished authors.'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 of its inhabitants - his parents and some of the others who shaped his life - he comes to realise how little he himself 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.