Michael Ignatieff’s powerful novel explores the bonds of memory, their configuration in identity, and their relationship to love, loyalty and death.

The unnamed narrator is a young Englishman whose mother is dying of Alzheimer’s disease. Her husband dies brokenhearted shortly after her, and the narrator’s wife grows more and more distant from him in the midst of all this. The narrator’s brother, a neurologist, resists his brother’s attempt to find some meaning in these tragedies and asserts that no redemption is possible in the face of death.

Shortlisted
The Booker Prize 1993
Published by
Chatto & Windus
Publication date
Michael Ignatieff

Michael Ignatieff

About the Author

Michael Ignatieff is internationally renowned both as a commentator on moral, ethical and political issues and as a novelist.
More about Michael Ignatieff