BEFORE THE KNIFE Carolyn Slaughter - Memories of an African Childhood

The author grew up in the Kalahari Desert in Botswana, this is her memoir.

This is a used book in good condition: nice and clean with minor reading wear; pages tanning lightly with age. See photos for cover blurb and sample page(s). The book in the photos is the actual book you will receive - we never use stock pictures - enjoy!

Publisher's blurb: Carolyn Slaughter is the author of ten novels, but for the last 12 years she has been completely silent. She had become conscious that there was something hidden in her past that had always haunted her fiction but which she had never fully faced. This memoir is the result of confronting the truth about her traumatic childhood. Carolyn's father was in the colonial service, but he lacked power and was ashamed of his Irish origins. In private, he was capable of acts of absolute sadism. When Carolyn was small, they lived comfortably in Swaziland having left India during the Partition. But when she turned six, things changed. Her mother gave birth to another daughter and they were posted to a remote area in the Kalahari desert. Bereft of a civilized social life, her mother plunged into a deep depression and turned completely away from Carolyn. While her older sister found friends and left for boarding school, Carolyn suffered a desperate sense of abandonment and loss and turned to the landscape of the Kalahari itself for solace. The stark fact that Carolyn was first raped by her father at the age of six is contained within the prologue and epilogue of this book. What lies in between is the story of an extraordinary childhood in Africa and a moving depiction of the complexities at the root of our relationships with mother, father, siblings.

Book Details

Code: SKU1014

Condition: See notes and photos below

Binding: Paperback

Pages: 253

Published: 2002 by Black Swan

ISBN: 0552999881

Postage: $6.90

Price: AUD $8.00