{"product_id":"adam-aitken-100-letters-home","title":"Adam Aitken, One Hundred Letters Home","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWinner of the 2021 Patrick White Literary Award\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBeautifully written, tightly structured, \u003cem\u003eOne Hundred Letters Home\u003c\/em\u003e is as profoundly moving as it is intelligent and playful. There is the experience here of time's shifting nature, the way me\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"text_exposed_show\"\u003emory, need and desire work across the layers of narrative that shape a life, told, untold, remembered, misremembered and forgotten. Memory's work rolls through Aitken's perfectly measured storytelling, vivid and mesmerising in its detail, in the detours and return, in a work that is as aware socially and politically, as it is compassionate and vulnerable. This is a rare work of memoir, expansive in its cultural scope, in the precision of detail and acceptance of the failures of memory, self and family, common to all of us in their variation. Between laughter and tears, the underlying emotional grit and relentlessness of \u003cem\u003eOne Hundred Letters Home\u003c\/em\u003e shifts things, changes you, as Aitken calls to account the past's ongoing presence in how we are to ourselves and each other.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e'Aitken’s memoir is less about obsessive, biographical exactitude, and more a movement towards excavation and piecing-together fragments into a distinct identity. The book’s rawness is a manifestation of his remembering and recollecting, like a story torn from an old newspaper, or a confession inside a much-folded letter.' Adam Aitken's\u003cem\u003e One Hundred Letters Home\u003c\/em\u003e reviewed by Ivy Alvarez in \u003ca href=\"http:\/\/southerlyjournal.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/ALVAREZ-of-Aitken-One-Hundred-Letters-Home.pdf\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eSoutherly\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Adam Aitken’s evocative memoir probes the reasons his father married his mother, an ‘Asian woman’, by researching family history, experimenting with Plots A, B, and C, and intertextual references to Christopher Koch’s 1995 novel \u003cem\u003eHighways to a War\u003c\/em\u003e, Graham Greene’s \u003cem\u003eThe Quiet American\u003c\/em\u003e, and Marcel Proust’s ‘Swann’s Way’ translated into Thai by his uncle. He tests the construction of his hybridity, the notion of his Asian ‘face’ and where it might be welcome, and where and with whom a trans-Asian citizen belongs.\" Gay Lynch, Transnational Literature\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"There is no labyrinth more difficult to thread, no enigma more baffling, than that represented by our own parents; nor any quest for understanding more seductive, indeed necessary, to attempt. In \u003cem\u003eOne Hundred Letters Home\u003c\/em\u003e Adam Aitken has accomplished the impossible with grace, acumen, humour, pathos and a beautiful sense of when to stand back and let the story tell—or not tell—itself. He has also given us a unique insight into the Asian-Australian milieu of the second half of the twentieth century. And something else as well: a passionate excursion amongst the perils and illuminations of soul-making.\" Martin Edmond\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e'\u003ci\u003eOne Hundred Letters Home\u003c\/i\u003e is a beautiful story that charts what is lost, and what is carried through our chaotic, multi-faceted lives. Always, home is a destination that forms a reference point, while remaining a permanent space of longing, forgiveness and recognition.' \u003ca href=\"http:\/\/www.compulsivereader.com\/2021\/05\/05\/a-review-of-one-hundred-letters-home-by-adam-aitken\/\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eCompulsive Reader.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"line-height: 1.4;\"\u003eAdam Aitken, \u003cem\u003eOne Hundred Letters Home\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan style=\"line-height: 1.4;\"\u003e2016. 304pp. ISBN 978-1-922181-04-6. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan style=\"line-height: 1.4;\"\u003eRelease date: April 2016.\u003c\/span\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"line-height: 1.4;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" src=\"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0182\/8349\/files\/AdamAitken_medium.jpg?7961921651604523270\" style=\"margin-right: 2px; float: left;\"\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAdam Aitken\u003c\/strong\u003e is a London-born teacher and writer who migrated to Sydney after spending his early childhood in Thailand and Malaysia. He has published five full length collections of poetry. \u003cem\u003eIn One House\u003c\/em\u003e, nominated in the Australian as one of the best poetry collections for 1996;  \u003cem\u003eRomeo and Juliet in Subtitles\u003c\/em\u003e shortlisted for the John Bray South Australian Literary Festival Award, and runner-up for The Age Book of the Year poetry prize; \u003cspan\u003e\u003cem\u003eEighth Habitation\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e (Giramondo Publishing) shortlisted for the same award in 2010, and most recently Archipelago, shortlisted for the Kenneth Slessor Award for 2018. In 2021, Adam Aitken received the Patrick White Literary Award.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHis writing shows a deep interest in contemporary cultural issues, especially issues of Asian-Australian identity and cultural hybridity.  His work has been translated into French, Swedish, German, Polish, Malay and Mandarin, and is published internationally. In 2010-11 he spend time as Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Hawaii, and Poet in Residence at the Keesing Studio in Paris. He co-edited the contemporary Asian Australian Poets anthology (Puncher \u0026amp; Wattmann) in 2013. His creative non-fiction work includes \u003cspan\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eOne Hundred Letters Home\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e (Vagabond Press 2016). \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Vagabond Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":3247077380,"sku":"","price":25.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0182\/8349\/products\/AitkenFC.jpg?v=1435022789","url":"https:\/\/vagabondpress.net\/de\/products\/adam-aitken-100-letters-home","provider":"Vagabond Press","version":"1.0","type":"link"}