My Father's Daughter: Memories of an Australian Childhood

(Paperback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

How does a daughter tell the story of her father Sheila Fitzpatrick was taught from an early age to question authority. She learnt it from her father, the journalist and radical historian Brian Fitzpatrick. But very soon, she began to turn her questioning gaze on him. Teasing apart the many layers of memory, Fitzpatrick reveals a complex portrait of an Australian family against a Cold War backdrop. As her relationship with her father fades from girlhood adoration to adolescent scepticism, she flees Melbourne for Oxford to start a new life. But it's not so easy to escape being her father's daughter. My Father's Daughter is a vivid evocation of an Australian childhood; a personal memoir told with the piercing insight of a historian.

Reviews

"A gem of a memoir. Its intelligence and candor shed brilliant light on a country and a climate of opinion." --Don Watson, author, American Journeys
"An interesting retrospective on the events, relationships and emotions of childhood and simply an engaging story." --Australian Bookseller & Publisher
"Memoirs have long been the vehicle of choice for reputation demolition, but rarely has the wrecking ball swung with such a blend of honesty and adoration than in Fitzpatrick's work." --Sydney Morning Herald
"One of the most unsparing, intelligent and engaging autobiographical voices I have encountered . . . A pleasure to read." --Bendigo Advertiser
"This thoughtful and thought provoking memoir about the author's fraught relationship with her radical father is a whispered contemplation of an unusual childhood." --Courier Mail

Author Bio

Sheila Fitzpatrick is a Professor in the Department of History at the University of Sydney, and Emerita Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. Born and educated in Australia, Fitzpatrick moved in the early 1970s to the United States, where she made her career as a Soviet historian. Author of The Russian Revolution and Everyday Stalinism, she is considered a founder in the field of Soviet history. A Spy in the Archives, a memoir of Moscow in the Cold War published in 2013, was a National Biography award finalist in 2014.