Our Fathers

Jamie returns to Scotland with his grandfather, the legendary social reformer Hugh Bawn, now living out his last days on the eighteenth floor of a high-rise. The young may is faced with the unquiet story of a country he thought he had left behind and now he listens to the voices of ghosts, and what they say about his own life. It is a story of love and landscape, of nationality and strong drink, of Catholic faith and the end of the old left. Jamie Bawn's journey home will leave him changed beyond words - beyond the words that darkened his childhood.

Short-listed for IMPAC Dublin Literary Award 2001 Short-listed for Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize 2000 Short-listed for Booker Prize for Fiction 1999 Short-listed for Whitbread Book Awards: First Novel Category 1999 Short-listed for Whitbread Prize (First Novel) 1999

"A beautiful, elegiac work . . . required reading for everybody."
-- Ian Rankin, "Evening Standard" (U.K.)
"O'Hagan offers a deeply moving meditation on losses, both personal and historical, and on the tide of time through generations."
--" Kirkus Reviews"
"A timely corrective to the idea that nothing profound can be said about now."
-- Will Self, "Observer" (U.K.)
"The most auspicious debut by a British writer for some time."
-- "The Independent" (U.K.)
" A beautiful, elegiac work . . . required reading for everybody."
-- Ian Rankin, "Evening Standard" (U.K.)
" O' Hagan offers a deeply moving meditation on losses, both personal and historical, and on the tide of time through generations."
-- " Kirkus Reviews"
" A timely corrective to the idea that nothing profound can be said about now."
-- Will Self, "Observer" (U.K.)
" The most auspicious debut by a British writer for some time."
-- "The Independent" (U.K.)

Andrew O'Hagan was born in Glasgow. He is the author of The Missing, which was shortlisted for the Esquire Award, the Saltire First Book Award, and the McVities prize for the Scottish Writer of the Year. His debut novel, Our Fathers, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, the Whitbread First Novel Award, and the IMPAC Dublin International Literary Prize. His second novel, Personality, was published in April 2003. Be Near Me was longlisted for the 2006 Man Booker Prize.

Andrew O'Hagan has written a story which is a poignant and powerful reclamation of the past and a clear sighted gaze at our relationship with history, personal and public. Jamie returns to Scotland with his grandfather, the legendary social reformer Hugh Bawn, now living out his last days on the eighteenth floor of a high-rise. The young may is faced with the unquiet story of a country he thought he had left behind and now he listens to the voices of ghosts, and what they say about his own life. It is a story of love and landscape, of nationality and strong drink, of Catholic faith and the end of the old left. Jamie Bawn's journey home will leave him changed beyond words - beyond the words that darkened his childhood.

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