Far From The Tree

WINNER OF THE WELLCOME BOOK PRIZE 2014Sometimes your child - the most familiar person of all - is radically different from you. The saying goes that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. But what happens when it does?WINNER OF THE WELLCOME BOOK PRIZE 2014A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERSometimes your child - the most familiar person of all - is radically different from you. The saying goes that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. But what happens when it does?Drawing on interviews with over three hundred families, covering subjects including deafness, dwarfs, Down's Syndrome, Autism, Schizophrenia, disability, prodigies, children born of rape, children convicted of crime and transgender people, Andrew Solomon documents ordinary people making courageous choices. Difference is potentially isolating, but Far from the Tree celebrates repeated triumphs of human love and compassion to show that the shared experience of difference is what unites us.Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for General Non-fiction and eleven other national awards. Winner of the Green Carnation Prize.

Winner of Green Carnation Prize 2013 (UK)
Winner of Wellcome Book Prize 2014 (UK)
Short-listed for National Book Critics Circle Non-Fiction Award 2013 (United States)
Long-listed for Samuel Johnson Prize 2013 (UK)

The tales Solomon returns with, of profound disability and extreme differences overcome, make it a bible of empathy and inclusion -- Cressida Connolly Spectator
Andrew Solomon’s Far From The Tree is a prodigious, illuminating book about the challenge of being a parent – especially when children are out of the ordinary -- Tim Adams Observer
Life-affirming, thought provoking and highly readable, the book was compiled over 10 years of interviews and I found it deeply moving -- Kate Kellaway Observer
Many accounts are desperately moving, but Solomon goes far beyond cheap pity... The book is an exquisite written study of parental love – as well as "a how-to manual for receptivity" -- Kerry Hudson Herald
[A] magnificent study of disability and identity differences -- Susannah Meadows New York Times
This wise book is a careful and surprising study of difference between parent and child and how it shapes our lives -- Stephen Grosz Sunday Telegraph
For anyone struggling with decisions over parenting, it’s an affirming reminder that there is no such thing as “normal” -- Femke Colborne Big Issue in the North
Parents – especially mothers – are the heroes of this book, many of them describing with extraordinary absence of self-pity how they have coped with almost unimaginable adversity -- Dominic Lawson Sunday Times
Solomon really makes you think... Uniquely brilliant -- William Leith Evening Standard
Beautiful The Times

Andrew Solomon is a writer and activist working on politics, culture and psychology. He writes regularly for the New Yorker, Newsweek, and the Guardian. He is a Lecturer in Psychiatry at Cornell University and Special Adviser on LGBT Affairs to Yale University's Department of Psychiatry. The Noonday Demon won the 2001 National Book Award and was a finalist for the 2002 Pulitzer Prize. His highly-acclaimed study of family, Far from the Tree won the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award for General Non-fiction, the Lukas Book Prize and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, among others. He lives with his husband and son in New York and London.

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