I have just finished reading Philippe Lançon’s masterful Disturbance, a vivid and intensely personal account of being wounded in the Charlie Hebdo attacks.
It’s the story of a violent moment that changed the author’s life, much like what has happened with my dad.
What memoirs are you reading, specifically with violence or trauma as a theme?
Being Heumann.....the memoir of an amazing woman, Judy Heumann, who died this past weekend. She was a warrior and a hero to so many of us in the disability community. Her story is really about the power of advocacy and the power of community to effect change. She was relentless.....and so funny! If you have not yet seen the documentary, "Crip Camp", I highly recommend it.
Mar 7, 2023·edited Mar 7, 2023Liked by Hanif Kureishi
Some time ago - The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby. The author's story written with locked-in syndrome: he dictated the book by blinking his left eyelid. Thinking of you, Hanif. K x
'A journey from a luminous childhood, through the dark experiences of supposed madness, escaping lobotomy at a mental institution because she had just won a New Zealand National literary prize. Engaging tone, humorous perspective and exceptional imaginative power.'
I am reading and rereading my own memoir of my white mother. My father, a writer and artist from the West Indies was and is still well-known. His paintings are in the Tate London. My mother made him successful but her life never got a mention. It's called And...a memoir of my mother. I hope you all are reading it. I did send one to Hanif because he was the first person to take my writing seriously. Thank you and love to you.
Faith, Hope and Carnage by Nick Cave. Though not specifically about trauma, the catastrophic loss of his 15-year old son in 2015 haunts every single beautiful page
Hello Carlo I’ve recently read Yoga by Emmanuel Carrère which is also connected to the Charlie Hebdo murders in that one of the author’s best friends was a victim. It’s called Yoga but the book deals with mental illness, enlightenment , escapism, trauma and celebrity. Thanks for posting and stay well!
Kiese Laymon’s unbelievably honest memoir, Heavy, about his struggle with his body, his mother’s gambling, his life as a professor of literature, and the saving grace of his Black friends. I can’t recommend it highly enough. I laughed so hard, I cried, I fell in love with his sentences. This guy is the real deal.
An Unquiet Mind by Kay Redfield Jamieson. Jamieson is a world leading psychiatrist who deals with severe mental illness herself. At the age of 44 after submitting my PhD and having built a very beautiful and meaningful marriage and life, I began to experience paranoid delusions and an out of the blue descent into utter mental torment and anguish. Turns out that 18 years of childhood trauma had not been dealt with after all. Having lost even my own self on a way I did not feel even possible I had to search for answers and hope that I may one day be able return to the work that cost me so much.
Another memoir that springs to mind in response to your question, Carlo, is Sonali Deraniyagala’s startling account of the Boxing Day tsunami. It’s called Wave
I'm also re-reading Rushdie's "Joseph Anton"...the two voices within this memoir are quite striking...the first section of remembered/shaped trauma of the fatwa...the second section about his new life/impressions as a citizen of New York City...
In Extremis, the life of war correspondent Marie Colvin. A brave, very female account of life in (and out) of war zones, the struggle of living between 'two worlds' and the price ultimately paid.
The Wave by Sonali Deraniyagala about losing her whole family in Sri-Lanka in the Indian Ocean Tsunami. It’s devastating but I could not stop reading till I finished it!
I loved In the Dream House by Carmen Maria. Machado (on the trauma of a violent relationship) and Jenn Ashworth’s Notes Made While Falling (about medical trauma and it’s aftermath)
I would recommend Journal Of A Disappointed Man by WNP Barbellion (the pseudonym of Bruce Cummings). The diary of a man who was under sentence of death from the day he was born, but the knowledge was kept from him by all of his family, including his wife who was informed of his illness (by his doctor) before agreeing to marry him. It brings home what a blessing good health really is and the final entries, once he has learned the truth about his condition (MS), are almost unbearably moving.
I am re-reading Joseph Heller’s No Laughing Matter about his book about what happened to him as he was diagnosed with the insidious Guillén-Barre syndrome, and suddenly was paralyzed like my daughter, Jen.
Friends, acquaintances and his sharp wit kept Heller alive.
Thank you Carlo for the question and for taking good care of your dad.
Die Welt von Gestern / The World of Yesterday. Millionaire author and master of readability, Stefan Zweig, sent the MS to his translator and publisher the day before he and his wife took poison. He was safe from the Nazis. Although he had lost his home and his collection of famous autograph manuscripts, he had money, fame, and a welcome abroad. But he could not live with the loss of the feeling of freedom, and the loss of the culturally flourishing, internationalizing--though also racist--world he had known. The problems in Britain which I sense are less extreme, if they are of a similar kind.
Here’s three Carlo in order of first to last say over a period of three years so
1. Code name Madeleine (A Sufi spy in Nazi occupied Paris) by Arthur J Magida 🌸
2. Thin places (‘a beautiful and harrowing book about trauma -‘ ) Kerri ni Dochartaigh ⭐️
and last one read in January this year
3. Spare by Harry - his trauma is well known but despite this and despite all the negative publicity/ should be read ⭐️
Writing is cathartic - I’m so glad Hanif began to do this even though it is sometimes so full of despair - in this deep place he’s bringing something back up. (Possibly literally too!! ) x
Read it a few months back. An extraordinary story of an enduring friendship between two women defining themselves as perfect and imperfect interchangeably. It is about how hard life can be, and yet how functionally serving grit can be!
Thank you for the Lancon suggestion, which I did not know of. Some good recommendations in the discussion, one I haven't seen mentioned yet is Maggie Farrell's 'I Am, I Am, I Am'.
Rushdie's 'Joseph Anton' is the latest I've read. Seriously great stuff. My late friend Andrew Riemer's 'A Family History of Smoking', relating his surviving the extermination of the Jews of Budapest is masterful.
The Madness - a memoir of war, fear and PTSD. Fergal Keane. I was standing at Medyka - the Polish/ Ukrainian border March 21 2022 when he and a BBC news crew crossed back into Poland. The look on his face still haunts me.
Richard Wright's "Black Boy" first published in 1946 expresses the psychological trauma suffered by Wright when he was growing up in the United States due to racism. In reading it, I felt immersed in the journey with him. The terror of his situation was so great, it was hard to read.
"Captive Fathers, Captive Children: Legacies of the War in the Far East" (Bloomsbury) ... part personal memoir blended with extracts from interviews with children of POWs, describing how war trauma persists for a lifetime and how I/we manage the memories.
Hello Mr Kureishi, et COURAGE! my answer to Carlo's question: I read a long time ago: Quel beau dimanche, by Jorge Semprun. I don't know if it has been translated in English.... and also La Douleur, by Marguerite Duras.
I wish you a good recovery!!! best wishes from Paris, France!
Having experienced Hanif’s calamity, there is this memoir, Take It Lying Down: Finding My Feet After a Spinal Cord Injury. “a movingly intricate weave―a detailed and poetic chronicle of healing against all odds, an intense love story, a narrative of a young man’s journey from Maine to New Mexico and adulthood, and a book of literary inspiration and wisdom . . . this is not a medical book, not a self-help book: it’s a literate, occasionally theatrical, surprisingly buoyant, always philosophical and compelling journey through one man’s life.”―From the Foreword by Len Jenkin
Babi Yar by Anatoly Kuznetsov. At the age of twelve, Anatoly Kuznetsov experienced the Nazi invasion of Ukraine while living near a naturally occurring deep ravine which was then made into a convenient killing pit. The ravine was called Babi Yar. He began keeping a diary of the brutal occupation of Kiev that followed, first under the Nazis and then later, the Soviets. It's the kind of book you have to put down after a few hours to catch your breath.
I am surprised it hasn't been mentioned yet: Waking: A Memoir of Trauma and Transcendence by Matthew Sanford. Sanford was hurt in a car crash when he was 13, and he is since paralyzed from the chest down. This is a powerful memoir about what healing means. Sanford was interviewed by Krista Tippett for the On Being podcast; the interview is a good introduction.
Also: The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey
Great question! Thanks for asking. I love memoirs.
Man's Search for Meaning, by Viktor Frankl. Not reading currently, but a memoir that I periodically re-read. It's a combination of memoir of his experiences in Auschwitz and the philosophical perspective he gained.
The Faraway Nearby, by Rebecca Solnit. Not so much absorbed by violence or trauma, but it does address the trauma of dealing with a mother's descent into dementia: (Solnit is simply an amazing writer -- this may be her best work.)
Nadezhda Mandelstam 'Hope against Hope' - living with the normalisation of state persecution in the years running up to her husband's arrest, exile and ultimate death in a transit camp for writing a poem about Stalin.
None of these may be any use. I was homeless for almost a year in 2018/9 (not on the street, I hasten to add, but it was traumatic & physically demanding enough); that was a very specific kind of violent break, & my reading has been quite political, but it's possible that some of my reading in the aftermath of that time might help.
First, of course, given my situation, Thoreau. Walden was great for me at the time & I'd argue it's great for anyone any time - but really I'm recommending his essay on John Brown. Brown was made of IRON, and Thoreau's essay is an inspiration. I just think Thoreau's an amazing companion to have.
Second, Homesick: or, Why I Live in a Shed, by Catrina Davies. The book uses Walden for its organising principle, but it's brilliant in its own right - I guess ultimately it's about her approach to an impossible situation.
This one isn't a book; it's a radio play by Sian Ejiwumni-Le Berre, about a doomed friendship between (my longtime hero) Fanny Burney and Mme de Staël. Funny, & light, & not long (enough), it's largely, quietly, about the fictional black servant woman who narrates it. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0009yxj
Finally, this one might seem like a mad suggestion; it's a novel for kids. Johnny Tremaine, by Esther Forbes. He's an ambitious hothead apprentice silversmith in Boston in the 1770s, and it's about him coming to terms with a sudden catastrophic - indeed, crippling - injury. Plus Paul Revere. A brilliant book about learning to prevail.
"Solito" by Javier Zamora -- about his 3,000 mile journey from a small village in El Salvador to the U.S. border. He was nine years old and traveling alone with the *help* of a coyote and a group of strangers. Before the uninformed spout off about illegal immigration, they should consider reading this. "Kaffir Boy" by Mark Mathabane is an autobiography, but also worth reading for those who wonder what it was like being black in South Africa during the apartheid era.
KG Kannabiran, The Speaking Constitution: A Sisyphean Life in Law — my father’s account of his untiring struggle with state violence and impunity in India
I have a whole category on my bookshelves for "traumatic memoirs "! They help me deal with the disappointment, sadness and frustration of getting diagnosed with parkinson's disease 2 years ago. That caused a major shit-meltdown which l'm still not over. Anyway here's a small selection:
-This is not a pity memoir by Abi Morgan
- The world l fell out of by Melanie Reid
- The Choice by Edith Eger
- Gone by Ljnda Olson
Also books by Henry Fraser and Karen Darke and Michael J Fox...and more that l can't directly remember!
Sending love, hope you're finding some relief. Sarah 😘
Harry Crews. His childhood in early Deep South on the Florida-Georgia border was several close calls with death and a long engagement with poverty. Beautiful writing full of haunting and emotional paradox.
Writing committments and logistics delayed my contribution to this thread for which I apologise! I will be bold and say do consider reading my memoir First in the World Somewhere, which is basically a post punk memoir in East London with disability thrown in. It's available everywhere, the usual places although as yet no Audible which is very frustrating for me as that would bring many other readers more access to it. Also Denton Welch, who is quite a difficult read. A Voice Through the Cloud is worth the effort, a veiled autobiography including details of his injury.
Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson.
Being Heumann.....the memoir of an amazing woman, Judy Heumann, who died this past weekend. She was a warrior and a hero to so many of us in the disability community. Her story is really about the power of advocacy and the power of community to effect change. She was relentless.....and so funny! If you have not yet seen the documentary, "Crip Camp", I highly recommend it.
Some time ago - The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby. The author's story written with locked-in syndrome: he dictated the book by blinking his left eyelid. Thinking of you, Hanif. K x
I found Joan Didion’s 2 accounts the the death of her daughter and her husband v good
Hi Carlo
1. An Angel at my Table by Janet Frame.
Summed up like this:
'A journey from a luminous childhood, through the dark experiences of supposed madness, escaping lobotomy at a mental institution because she had just won a New Zealand National literary prize. Engaging tone, humorous perspective and exceptional imaginative power.'
In my view, a unique autobiography.
2. I am not your Negro by James Baldwin
I am reading and rereading my own memoir of my white mother. My father, a writer and artist from the West Indies was and is still well-known. His paintings are in the Tate London. My mother made him successful but her life never got a mention. It's called And...a memoir of my mother. I hope you all are reading it. I did send one to Hanif because he was the first person to take my writing seriously. Thank you and love to you.
Faith, Hope and Carnage by Nick Cave. Though not specifically about trauma, the catastrophic loss of his 15-year old son in 2015 haunts every single beautiful page
Memorial Drive by Natasha Trethewey
Hello Carlo I’ve recently read Yoga by Emmanuel Carrère which is also connected to the Charlie Hebdo murders in that one of the author’s best friends was a victim. It’s called Yoga but the book deals with mental illness, enlightenment , escapism, trauma and celebrity. Thanks for posting and stay well!
Kiese Laymon’s unbelievably honest memoir, Heavy, about his struggle with his body, his mother’s gambling, his life as a professor of literature, and the saving grace of his Black friends. I can’t recommend it highly enough. I laughed so hard, I cried, I fell in love with his sentences. This guy is the real deal.
An Unquiet Mind by Kay Redfield Jamieson. Jamieson is a world leading psychiatrist who deals with severe mental illness herself. At the age of 44 after submitting my PhD and having built a very beautiful and meaningful marriage and life, I began to experience paranoid delusions and an out of the blue descent into utter mental torment and anguish. Turns out that 18 years of childhood trauma had not been dealt with after all. Having lost even my own self on a way I did not feel even possible I had to search for answers and hope that I may one day be able return to the work that cost me so much.
Another memoir that springs to mind in response to your question, Carlo, is Sonali Deraniyagala’s startling account of the Boxing Day tsunami. It’s called Wave
I'm also re-reading Rushdie's "Joseph Anton"...the two voices within this memoir are quite striking...the first section of remembered/shaped trauma of the fatwa...the second section about his new life/impressions as a citizen of New York City...
In Extremis, the life of war correspondent Marie Colvin. A brave, very female account of life in (and out) of war zones, the struggle of living between 'two worlds' and the price ultimately paid.
The Wave by Sonali Deraniyagala about losing her whole family in Sri-Lanka in the Indian Ocean Tsunami. It’s devastating but I could not stop reading till I finished it!
Hisham Matar’s The Return. Transfixing.
I read (and will never forget Disturbance) in french (I am French!), called "Le lambeau" which means the piece of flesh transplanted on his face ...
Memoirs? The entire work of Knausgaard!
I loved In the Dream House by Carmen Maria. Machado (on the trauma of a violent relationship) and Jenn Ashworth’s Notes Made While Falling (about medical trauma and it’s aftermath)
I would recommend Journal Of A Disappointed Man by WNP Barbellion (the pseudonym of Bruce Cummings). The diary of a man who was under sentence of death from the day he was born, but the knowledge was kept from him by all of his family, including his wife who was informed of his illness (by his doctor) before agreeing to marry him. It brings home what a blessing good health really is and the final entries, once he has learned the truth about his condition (MS), are almost unbearably moving.
I am re-reading Joseph Heller’s No Laughing Matter about his book about what happened to him as he was diagnosed with the insidious Guillén-Barre syndrome, and suddenly was paralyzed like my daughter, Jen.
Friends, acquaintances and his sharp wit kept Heller alive.
Thank you Carlo for the question and for taking good care of your dad.
Die Welt von Gestern / The World of Yesterday. Millionaire author and master of readability, Stefan Zweig, sent the MS to his translator and publisher the day before he and his wife took poison. He was safe from the Nazis. Although he had lost his home and his collection of famous autograph manuscripts, he had money, fame, and a welcome abroad. But he could not live with the loss of the feeling of freedom, and the loss of the culturally flourishing, internationalizing--though also racist--world he had known. The problems in Britain which I sense are less extreme, if they are of a similar kind.
Annie Ernaux - The Years is heartbreakingly wonderful.
Here’s three Carlo in order of first to last say over a period of three years so
1. Code name Madeleine (A Sufi spy in Nazi occupied Paris) by Arthur J Magida 🌸
2. Thin places (‘a beautiful and harrowing book about trauma -‘ ) Kerri ni Dochartaigh ⭐️
and last one read in January this year
3. Spare by Harry - his trauma is well known but despite this and despite all the negative publicity/ should be read ⭐️
Writing is cathartic - I’m so glad Hanif began to do this even though it is sometimes so full of despair - in this deep place he’s bringing something back up. (Possibly literally too!! ) x
"The Liars Club" and "Cherry" by Mary Karr. Trauma offset by dark humor. She's an amazing writer and an amazing person.
I am re-reading Lucy Grealy's unforgettable Autobiography of a Face. A lyrical, tragic, wondrous book.
"One day I will write about this place"
Binyavanga Wainaina on his childhood in Kenya
Truth & Beauty-A Friendship, by Ann Patchett.
Read it a few months back. An extraordinary story of an enduring friendship between two women defining themselves as perfect and imperfect interchangeably. It is about how hard life can be, and yet how functionally serving grit can be!
Thank you for the Lancon suggestion, which I did not know of. Some good recommendations in the discussion, one I haven't seen mentioned yet is Maggie Farrell's 'I Am, I Am, I Am'.
Rushdie's 'Joseph Anton' is the latest I've read. Seriously great stuff. My late friend Andrew Riemer's 'A Family History of Smoking', relating his surviving the extermination of the Jews of Budapest is masterful.
Blue nights and The year of magical thinking
The Madness - a memoir of war, fear and PTSD. Fergal Keane. I was standing at Medyka - the Polish/ Ukrainian border March 21 2022 when he and a BBC news crew crossed back into Poland. The look on his face still haunts me.
Currently reading Victor Klemperer's I Will Bear Witness.
I always come back to Edward Said's "Out of place" and William Styron's "Darkness visible"...
Richard Wright's "Black Boy" first published in 1946 expresses the psychological trauma suffered by Wright when he was growing up in the United States due to racism. In reading it, I felt immersed in the journey with him. The terror of his situation was so great, it was hard to read.
"Captive Fathers, Captive Children: Legacies of the War in the Far East" (Bloomsbury) ... part personal memoir blended with extracts from interviews with children of POWs, describing how war trauma persists for a lifetime and how I/we manage the memories.
Hello Mr Kureishi, et COURAGE! my answer to Carlo's question: I read a long time ago: Quel beau dimanche, by Jorge Semprun. I don't know if it has been translated in English.... and also La Douleur, by Marguerite Duras.
I wish you a good recovery!!! best wishes from Paris, France!
I recently very much enjoyed John O'Donoghue's Sectioned: a life interrupted
Having experienced Hanif’s calamity, there is this memoir, Take It Lying Down: Finding My Feet After a Spinal Cord Injury. “a movingly intricate weave―a detailed and poetic chronicle of healing against all odds, an intense love story, a narrative of a young man’s journey from Maine to New Mexico and adulthood, and a book of literary inspiration and wisdom . . . this is not a medical book, not a self-help book: it’s a literate, occasionally theatrical, surprisingly buoyant, always philosophical and compelling journey through one man’s life.”―From the Foreword by Len Jenkin
Babi Yar by Anatoly Kuznetsov. At the age of twelve, Anatoly Kuznetsov experienced the Nazi invasion of Ukraine while living near a naturally occurring deep ravine which was then made into a convenient killing pit. The ravine was called Babi Yar. He began keeping a diary of the brutal occupation of Kiev that followed, first under the Nazis and then later, the Soviets. It's the kind of book you have to put down after a few hours to catch your breath.
I am surprised it hasn't been mentioned yet: Waking: A Memoir of Trauma and Transcendence by Matthew Sanford. Sanford was hurt in a car crash when he was 13, and he is since paralyzed from the chest down. This is a powerful memoir about what healing means. Sanford was interviewed by Krista Tippett for the On Being podcast; the interview is a good introduction.
Also: The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey
Great question! Thanks for asking. I love memoirs.
Man's Search for Meaning, by Viktor Frankl. Not reading currently, but a memoir that I periodically re-read. It's a combination of memoir of his experiences in Auschwitz and the philosophical perspective he gained.
The Faraway Nearby, by Rebecca Solnit. Not so much absorbed by violence or trauma, but it does address the trauma of dealing with a mother's descent into dementia: (Solnit is simply an amazing writer -- this may be her best work.)
Virtually all the essays by James Baldwin.
Nadezhda Mandelstam 'Hope against Hope' - living with the normalisation of state persecution in the years running up to her husband's arrest, exile and ultimate death in a transit camp for writing a poem about Stalin.
None of these may be any use. I was homeless for almost a year in 2018/9 (not on the street, I hasten to add, but it was traumatic & physically demanding enough); that was a very specific kind of violent break, & my reading has been quite political, but it's possible that some of my reading in the aftermath of that time might help.
First, of course, given my situation, Thoreau. Walden was great for me at the time & I'd argue it's great for anyone any time - but really I'm recommending his essay on John Brown. Brown was made of IRON, and Thoreau's essay is an inspiration. I just think Thoreau's an amazing companion to have.
Second, Homesick: or, Why I Live in a Shed, by Catrina Davies. The book uses Walden for its organising principle, but it's brilliant in its own right - I guess ultimately it's about her approach to an impossible situation.
This one isn't a book; it's a radio play by Sian Ejiwumni-Le Berre, about a doomed friendship between (my longtime hero) Fanny Burney and Mme de Staël. Funny, & light, & not long (enough), it's largely, quietly, about the fictional black servant woman who narrates it. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0009yxj
Finally, this one might seem like a mad suggestion; it's a novel for kids. Johnny Tremaine, by Esther Forbes. He's an ambitious hothead apprentice silversmith in Boston in the 1770s, and it's about him coming to terms with a sudden catastrophic - indeed, crippling - injury. Plus Paul Revere. A brilliant book about learning to prevail.
I'm going to look for Philippe Lançon's book.
Finding Me by Viola Davis. The audio version, which she reads, is especially compelling.
"Solito" by Javier Zamora -- about his 3,000 mile journey from a small village in El Salvador to the U.S. border. He was nine years old and traveling alone with the *help* of a coyote and a group of strangers. Before the uninformed spout off about illegal immigration, they should consider reading this. "Kaffir Boy" by Mark Mathabane is an autobiography, but also worth reading for those who wonder what it was like being black in South Africa during the apartheid era.
KG Kannabiran, The Speaking Constitution: A Sisyphean Life in Law — my father’s account of his untiring struggle with state violence and impunity in India
alexander masters's stuart: a life backwards.
Dear Mr Kureishi
I have a whole category on my bookshelves for "traumatic memoirs "! They help me deal with the disappointment, sadness and frustration of getting diagnosed with parkinson's disease 2 years ago. That caused a major shit-meltdown which l'm still not over. Anyway here's a small selection:
-This is not a pity memoir by Abi Morgan
- The world l fell out of by Melanie Reid
- The Choice by Edith Eger
- Gone by Ljnda Olson
Also books by Henry Fraser and Karen Darke and Michael J Fox...and more that l can't directly remember!
Sending love, hope you're finding some relief. Sarah 😘
Harry Crews. His childhood in early Deep South on the Florida-Georgia border was several close calls with death and a long engagement with poverty. Beautiful writing full of haunting and emotional paradox.
Writing committments and logistics delayed my contribution to this thread for which I apologise! I will be bold and say do consider reading my memoir First in the World Somewhere, which is basically a post punk memoir in East London with disability thrown in. It's available everywhere, the usual places although as yet no Audible which is very frustrating for me as that would bring many other readers more access to it. Also Denton Welch, who is quite a difficult read. A Voice Through the Cloud is worth the effort, a veiled autobiography including details of his injury.