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A coming-of-age memoir of love, rebellion, and political awakening, set amid Argentina’s buried history of Indigenous genocide, military coups, and disappearing women.When setting out to write a memoir about growing up in in the little-known British Community of Buenos Aires, Penny Woolcock anticipated recounting her escape from a sheltered childhood where girls like her were trained for marriage and polite society. But she soon discovered that behind a genteel façade of afternoon tea and games of hockey lay a much darker story, one of mass killings and amnesia.
The Man Who Gave Me a Biscuit braids together memories of a tumultuous adolescence, which saw Woolcock join a radical theatre group and fall in love with the most unsuitable man she could find, and reflections on the legacy of violence and authoritarianism that to this day permeates her country of birth.
In these pages we learn of the “Conquest of the Desert”, a genocide that took place fifteen years after her great grandparents’ arrival from Europe; a succession of military coups, including the murderous Junta of the 1970’s; the surreal idiosyncrasies of Peronism; and the madness of today’s President Javier Milei, whose key advisor is his dead mastiff, Conan.
In turns funny, painful, entertaining and downright terrifying, this story in chiaroscuro superbly contrasts the excitement of a teenager’s world opening up, and the brutality of a society shut down by repression and fear.
About the author
Penny Woolcock was born in Buenos Aires in the mid-20th century and raised in a conservative British expatriate community that few know exists. Expected to conform to strict social norms, including marrying a suitable Anglo-Argentine boy, Woolcock felt stifled by her upbringing. After finishing school, she rebelled by joining a radical theatre company, running off with a man considered entirely unsuitable, and becoming a single mother. From these unconventional beginnings she built a remarkable career as an award-winning filmmaker, opera director for the Metropolitan Opera in New York and the English National Opera in London, and a solo artist with exhibitions of her work.
