The Suitcase - Six Attempts to Cross a Border

*Winner of the PEN Ackerley Prize 2022*

'This is family history at its best... the words fizz off the page and flutter in the mind' Sunday Times

If you open that suitcase you'll never close it again.

Ten years ago, Frances Stonor Saunders was handed an old suitcase filled with her father's papers. Her father's life had been a study in borders - exiled from Romania during the war, to Turkey then Egypt and eventually Britain, and ultimately to the borderless territory of Alzheimer's. The unopened suitcase seems to represent everything that had made her father unknowable to her in life.

So begins a captivating exploration of history, memory and geography, as Frances Stoner Saunders decides to unpick her family's past.

About the author

Frances Stonor Saunders is a writer, broadcaster and documentary-maker. She writes for the London Review of Books and Guardian, and is the former Arts Editor of the New Statesman. Her first book, Who Paid the Piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War, has been translated into twenty languages, and was awarded the Royal Historical Society's William Gladstone Memorial Prize. She is also the author of Hawkwood and The Woman Who Shot Mussolini. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and lives in London.

Summary

Now she finds herself with the dilemma of two competing urges: wanting to know what's in the suitcase, and wanting not to know. So begins this captivating exploration of history, memory and geography, as Frances Stonor Saunders unpicks her father's and his family's past.

Product details

• Authors: Frances Stonor Saunders, Frances Stonor Saunders
• Publisher: Vintage UK
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 02.06.2022
• EAN: 9781784707705
• ISBN: 978-1-78470-770-5
• No. of pages: 240
• Dimensions: 128 mm x 196 mm x 15 mm
• Subjects: Non-fiction book; FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS / General, European History, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Emigration & Immigration, Egypt, Poland, Romania, Turkey, Republic of South Africa, Local interest, family history & nostalgia, United Kingdom, Great Britain, Migration, immigration and emigration, Local and family history, nostalgia, Coping with Alzheimer’s and dementia, Alzheimer's & dementia, Coping with / advice about Alzheimer’s and dementia