Nobody's son : a memoir / Mark Slouka.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Slouka, Mark, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Slouka, Mark--Family.

Slouka, Mark.

Slouka, Mark--Childhood and youth.

Czech Americans--Biography.

Czech Americans.

Authors, American--Biography.

Authors, American.

Mothers and sons--New York (State)--Biography.

Mothers and sons.

Family secrets--New York (State).

Family secrets.

New York (State)--Biography.

New York (State).

Genre:

Biographies.

Autobiographies.

Physical Description:

274 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 22 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : W.W. Norton & Company, [2016]

Summary:

"'There comes a time in your life when the past decides to run you down,' Mark Slouka writes in this heartbreaking and soul-searching memoir about one man's attempt to reckon with the past. Born in Czechoslovakia, Mark Slouka's parents survived the Nazis only to have to escape the Communist purges after the war. Smuggled out of their own country, the newlyweds joined a tide of refugees moving from Innsbruck to Sydney to New York, dragging with them a history of blood and betrayal that their son would be born into. From World War I to the present, Slouka pieces together a remarkable story of refugees and war, displacement and denial--admitting into evidence memories, dreams, stories, the lies we inherit and the lies we tell--in an attempt to reach his mother, the enigmatic figure at the center of the labyrinth. Her story, the revelation of her life-long burden and the forty-year love affair that might have saved her show the way out of the maze."--Dust jacket.

ISBN:

9780393292305

0393292304

OCLC:

952195755