Description
Book Synopsis'That’s what happens when you listen to the stories and they start to tell themselves all over again … the more you hear, the more questions there are, answers unpeeling like the layers of an onion.’
Memoir, detective work and political history come together in this vivid and moving family biography told through the stories passed down by its undaunted women.
Heard on a toboggan in the Austrian mountains, in the back seat of an overloaded Mini toiling through Europe, on a coal barge in Paris … here are tales that take us from Hungary, Germany and Italy to France, England and Argentina, from the young actress in fin de siècle Vienna to the 16-year-old schoolboy who disappeared for over 50 years. My Disappearing Uncle is a journey of discovery that explores the complicated dance between the present and the past.
Trade ReviewA compulsive tangle of tales touching not only on lives, loves and the longing to belong, but also the brutality of war and injustice suffered again and yet again in Europe up to the present day.
-- Katya Adler * BBC Europe Editor *
An astonishing book, beautifully written. Echoes of a middle-European Forsyte Saga later colliding with the brutal realities of Nazism, and what came next.
-- John Carr * author of Escape from the Ghetto *
Kathy Henderson has a
rare ability to draw us into her immediate family and then reverse the
telescope to take in the cultural and political canvas imploding into world
wars, Holocaust and diaspora … Her writing is beautiful and captivating and we
are carried along in her unfolding discoveries …
-- Frankie Armstrong * singer, author and activist *
Kathy has peeled away
the layers of her family history to reveal not only a fascinating narrative but
the way in which chance encounters enrich our lives.
-- Meriel Schindler * author of The Lost Café Schindler *
She fits these tales into a gripping … historical narrative for her own better understanding of what occurred … to allow us, her readers, a deeper insight into the complex history of central Europe through the 20th Century, its two world wars and beyond.
-- Diana Quick * actor and writer *
*'Henderson has that rare quality of being able to draw the reader into her world, offering them a rich and cultural experience along the way.' *- The Lady
‘an evocative account of a childhood in a postwar London’ - Who Do You Think You Are?
