Book Details

My Father’s Daughter

Memories of an Australian Childhood

Sheila Fitzpatrick

Teasing apart the many layers of memory, Fitzpatrick reveals a complex portrait of an Australian family.

Awards

Shortlisted for State Library of NSW National Biography Award 2011

Opinion

'Memoirs have long been the vehicle of choice for reputation demolition, but rarely has the wrecking ball swung with such a blend of honesty and adoration than in Fitzpatrick's work, My Father's Daughter.'
Tim Elliott
Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday 14/8/2010

'An interesting retrospective on the events, relationships and emotions of childhood and simply an engaging story.'
Lyndal Moore
Australian Bookseller & Publisher
August, 2010

About this Title

How does a daughter tell the story of her father?

Sheila Fitzpatrick was taught from an early age to question authority. She learnt it from her father, the journalist and radical historian Brian Fitzpatrick. But very soon, she began to turn her questioning gaze on him.

Teasing apart the many layers of memory, Fitzpatrick reveals a complex portrait of an Australian family against a Cold War backdrop. As her relationship with her father fades from girlhood adoration to adolescent scepticism, she flees Melbourne for Oxford to start a new life. But it's not so easy to escape being her father's daughter.

My Father's Daughter is a vivid evocation of an Australian childhood; a personal memoir told with the piercing insight of a historian.

About the Author

Sheila Fitzpatrick is Distinguished Service Professor in Modern Russian History at the University of Chicago and an annual Visiting Professor at the University of Sydney. Her recent publications include Political Tourists: Travellers from Australia to the Soviet Union in the 1920s-1940s (edited with Carolyn Rasmussen), Against the Grain: Brian Fitzpatrick and Manning Clark in Australian History and Politics (edited with Stuart Macintyre), and Tear Off the Masks! Identity and Imposture in Twentieth-Century Russia.

Reviews

‘‘An interesting retrospective on the events, relationships and emotions of childhood and simply an engaging story.’’ (LYNDAL MOORE, AUSTRALIAN BOOKSELLER & PUBLISHER, 01/08/2010) Read full review

‘‘This thoughtful and thought provoking memoir about the author's fraught relationship with her radical father is a whispered contemplation of an unusual childhood.’’ (GILLIAN BRAMLEY-MOORE, COURIER MAIL, 07/08/2010) Read full review

‘‘Memoirs have long been the vehicle of choice for reputation demolition, but rarely has the wrecking ball swung with such a blend of honesty and adoration than in Fitzpatrick's work, My Father's Daughter.’’ (TIM ELLIOTT, SYDNEY MORNING HERALD, 14/08/2010) Read full review

‘‘One of the most unsparing, intelligent and engaging autobiographical voices I have encountered, My Father's Daughter was a pleasure to read.’’ (LORIEN KAYE, BENDIGO ADVERTISER, 04/09/2010) Read full review

‘‘What kept me turning the pages was the father daughter relationship, which changed from one of mutual admiration and loyalty in Sheila's childhood to something more painfully ambivalent.’’ (CHRISTINA HOUEN, WEST AUSTRALIAN, 14/08/2010) Read full review

Book Preview

978-0-522-85747-4