In the Name of the Father and Other Stories

An ageing man, once a son and now the father of two adult sons, tells his own story. Self-centred, irresponsible and given to cruelty, he knows he has failed as a parent, yet when he hunts for the causes he finds them mostly in the rest of his family rather than in himself. What sets him talking is the sale of the house where the family lived, a house his enigmatic brother built: his youngest son wants to be rid of it, since the home was meant to give their life a meaning it never had. Recalling his father's world of working-class drinkers on the edge of a town whose borders kept being redrawn, he asks less for forgiveness than to be understood, and the story weighs whether people indifferent to one another should still live together as a family.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novella

Length

109 pages in the original

Genres

Family (assigned by AI)

First published

2011 by Koloman Kertész Bagala

Author's age

44 when first published

ISBN

9788081080227 (original)

9780993377358 (Jantar Publishing, United Kingdom)