When she turned ninety, my mother sprang a final surprise on us. She started speaking in the voice of a stranger. Peter's mother is dying. Born in England and having spent most of her adult life as a doctor in Zimbabwe, she now lies on a hospital bed in the partitioned living room of his sister's London apartment, her accent having overnight become posher than the Queen's. Unsentimental, fiercely stubborn and at times hilarious, she finally drops her guard, losing all fear of conflict to become the family provocateur.
While confronting the revelations of what his family was - and wasn't - and the stoicism that sometimes threatened to destroy them, Peter also mourns the ending of his long marriage. At this point of rupture and healing, Peter reflects on his family's legacy of exile and their tenuous hold on home.
In Exit Wounds: A Story of Love, Loss and Occasional Wars, Peter Godwin considers, with both tenderness and candour, the life of émigrés, exiles and refugees, and grieves the many losses that make life both magnificent and unbearable. He brings us into the spaces that make us question, suffer and celebrate the relationships we have among family and friends, and the healing of our own wounds.
AUTHOR DETAILS
PETER GODWIN was born and raised in Zimbabwe. He is the author of six nonfiction books, including Mukiwa, which received the Orwell Prize and the Esquire-Apple-Waterstones Award, and When a Crocodile Eats the Sun, which won the Borders Original Voices Award. His book The Fear was selected by The New Yorker as a best book of the year. Peter Godwin has taught writing at Wesleyan and Columbia, and served as President of the PEN American Center. He is an Orwell fellow and a Guggenheim fellow. He lives in New York City.
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