by D. M. Thomas
First published 2021
Thomas moves through moments that shaped a lifetime, from his first glimpse of love in an infants school classroom to watching news coverage where a royal wedding overshadows Palestinian deaths. He confronts the shadow of Hitler that hung over his early years and the current threats to free expression that darken his later ones. His voice shifts between raw grief and sharp satirical observation, between controlled fury and tender memory. The book captures how personal experience collides with historical forces, how private moments of falling in love exist alongside public moments of violence and spectacle. Thomas writes with the confidence of someone who has spent decades following his own artistic path rather than chasing literary trends. Each piece distills decades of living into precise emotional moments, creating a collection that spans from intimate childhood memories to broad cultural criticism, all unified by his refusal to look away from either beauty or brutality.
Genres: literary-fiction, 20th-century, biography-memoir, 21st-century
Vibes: intimate, lyrical, thought-provoking
Tropes: personal-is-political, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Palestine
Period: 20th-century, 21st-century
94 pages · Paperback · The Cornovia Press
Content warnings: violence