The Family Clause

Description

An addictive novel about contemporary parenthood, which perfectly sums up the intensity and complexity of modern family life- falling in love, being a parent, being a child, and being an outsider. 'A bold and remarkable novel...full of heart and compassion' Dinaw Mengestu A bad-tempered grandfather, now living abroad, is back in Stockholm to see his adult children. The son is a failure, the daughter is having a baby with the wrong man, and their mother is a heartless deserter. Only he, the patriarch, is perfect - according to himself, at least. Over ten intense days, the strained relationships of this chaotic but entirely normal family unfold, and painful memories begin to resurface. Something has to give. But the son is duty-bound to his father by a murky, years-old agreement - can it be renegotiated, or will it bind everyone to the past for ever? 'The dynamics of each relationship are superbly complex, and Khemiri's wry, comic touch gives a lightness to the inevitability as the children follow in their father's footsteps' Guardian 'Excellent...the complex portrait of a family that is both identifiable and distinctive, normal and strange' TLS

Jonas Hassen Khemiri (Author) Jonas Hassen Khemiri is the author of five novels, six plays and a collection of plays, essays and short stories. Among his many honours are the August Prize, the highest literary award for Swedish literature; the Per Olov Enquist Literary Prize; the Bor s Tidning Award for Best Literary Debut Novel; and an Obie Award. His novels have been translated into more than thirty languages, and his plays have been performed by more than one hundred companies around the world. He lives in Stockholm, Sweden.

A beautiful study of familial need and mess, in which the universal and the particular play footsie with each other. Deft, artful, but above all insightful till it hurts, this is Khemiri's best yet. -- Nikita Lalwani A bold and remarkable novel - a marvel of form and imagination that is also miraculously full of heart and compassion. -- Dinaw Mengestu Absent fathers, wayward children, generational strife and the sheer fatigue of new parenthood... Khemiri's prose has a zing and bite stylishly served by Alice Menzies's pacy, idiomatic translation...The Family Clause [has] an epic, as well as a comic, buoyancy. -- Boyd Tonkin * Spectator * The dynamics of each relationship are superbly complex, and Khemiri's wry, comic touch gives a lightness to the inevitability as the children follow in their father's footsteps. -- Catherine Menon * Guardian * Excellent... Exquisitely translated by Alice Menzies... What Khemiri achieves is not just an engrossing narrative but the complex portrait of a family that is both identifiable and distinctive, normal and strange. -- Tabish Khair * Times Literary Supplement *