Romulus, My Father - Softcover

Gaita, Raimond

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1876485175 ISBN 13: 9781876485177

Publisher: The Text Publishing Company, 1999

Synopsis

Romulus Gaita fled his home in his native Yugoslavia at the age of thirteen, and came to Australia with his young wife Christine and their four-year-old son soon after the end of World War II. Tragic events were to overtake them. Raimond Gaita has an extraordinary story to tell about growing up with his father amid the stony paddocks and flowing grasses of country Australia. Written simply and movingly, Romulus, My Father is about how a compassionate and honest man taught his son the meaning of living a decent life. It is about passion, betrayal and madness, about friendship and the joy and dignity of work, about character and fate, affliction and spirituality. No one will read this wonderful book without an enhanced sense of the possibilities of being alive. 'Consistently astounding...one of the most remarkable works of autobiography I have read for years, a memoir of absolutely compelling tragi-comic quality.' Peter Craven, Australian

About this title

Review

Raimond Gaita is a philosopher by profession (he teaches in Australia and at King's College, London) but a writer by vocation. This elegantly written memoir takes in the social history of 1950s rural Victoria as well as recording the emotional displacement of European immigrants in Australia. He recounts the story of his father's migration, first from Yugoslavia and then from a war-torn Germany to a remote and demeaning clearing camp in Victoria. A skilled iron worker, he was set to work with a pick and shovel while his wife and child were sent to live in a nearby camp. Gaita's hard-won moral vision is a legacy of his parents' suffering and a unique addition to the stories of Second World War survivors and their descendants. The love between father and devoted son takes centre stage as Gaita's mother falls victim to a harrowing mental breakdown expressive of her family's degradation and pain. Gaita recalls a harsh landscape that complements his mother's sense of isolation. Whereas some readers may feel his treatment of her is unsympathetic it is surely testimony of his strength of mind and his ability to overcome personal tragedy and convert it into a moving meditation on sorrow and its resolution. --Lilian Pizzichini

About the Author

Raimond Gaita: Raimond Gaita was born in Germany in 1946. He is Emeritus Professor of moral philosophy at Kings College London and a Professorial fellow at the Melbourne Law School and the faculty of Arts of the University of Melbourne.
His six books have been published in many translations.

Edition details

• Publisher: The Text Publishing Company
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1876485175
• ISBN 13: 9781876485177
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224