From the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and bestselling author
of ‘Backlash’, an astonishing confrontation with the enigma of her
father and the larger riddle of identity consuming our age. 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 in 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 identified as a
complete woman now connected to the silent, explosive, and ultimately
violent father 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 metamorphosis 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 you can't escape?
Boktitel: In the Darkroom Författare: Susan Faludi Bokförlag: William Collins Källa: Bokförlaget William Collins
Susan Faludi är en amerikansk författare och journalist.