The Clothes on Their Backs

Vivien Kovacs spends her childhood in a gloomy red-brick mansion flat near the Marylebone Road, an only child, daughter of Hungarian Jewish refugees who, grateful to England, have chosen to live as quietly as mice. Her one rebellion is a love of vintage clothes. When she is ten, an uncle she has never heard of, Sándor, appears at the door, flashily dressed and wearing a diamond watch, with a teenage girlfriend on his arm, and her parents send him away. Years later, widowed young and living in her old room at her parents' flat, Vivien realises that the notorious slum landlord just out of prison is the same man. She seeks him out, posing as a writer who wants to tell his life, and begins to learn the family's real history.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Genres

Family, Migration (assigned by AI)

Set in

United Kingdom, 1970s

First published

2008

Author's age

57 when first published

ISBN

9781844085408 (Virago, United Kingdom)

9781844085422 (Virago, United Kingdom)

More

Wikidata