Father and Son cover art

Father and Son

A memoir about family, the past and mortality

Preview

Free with 30-day trial
Prime logo New to Audible Prime Member exclusive:
2 credits with free trial
1 credit a month to use on any title to download and keep
Listen to anything from the Plus Catalogue—thousands of Audible Originals, podcasts and audiobooks
Download titles to your library and listen offline
₹199 per month after 30-day trial. Cancel anytime.

Father and Son

Written by: Jonathan Raban
Narrated by: James Langton
Free with 30-day trial

₹199 per month after 30-day trial. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for ₹323.00

Buy Now for ₹323.00

Confirm Purchase
Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice.
Cancel

About this listen

A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF 2023

'A beautiful, compelling memoir . . . Father and Son is an exquisite, sometimes lunatic tension between powerful emotions and carnage on one side, and on the other, the conventional codes of what must remain unsaid. This, Raban's final work, is a gorgeous achievement" – Ian McEwan


On 11 June 2011, three days short of his sixty-ninth birthday, Jonathan Raban suffered a stroke which left him unable to use the right side of his body. Learning to use a wheelchair in a rehab facility outside Seattle and resisting the ministrations of the nurses overseeing his recovery, Raban began to reflect upon the measure of his own life in the face of his own mortality. Together with the chronicle of his recovery is the extraordinary story of his parents’ marriage, the early years of which were conducted by letter while his father fought in the Second World War.

Jonathan Raban engages profoundly and candidly with some of the biggest questions at the heart of what it means to be alive, laying bare the human capacity to withstand trauma, as well as the warmth, strength, and humour that persist despite it. Father and Son, the final work from the peerless man of letters, is a tremendous, continent-sweeping story of love and resilience in the face of immense loss.

©2023 Jonathan Raban (P)2023 Macmillan Publishers International Limited
Adventurers, Explorers & Survival Africa Authors Europe World War II

Critic Reviews

Any book, [Raban] thought, should roam as freely as it likes and this final volume is an illustration of that . . . and that’s what makes his memoir so lively, even when it stares death in the face (Blake Morrison)
[Raban's] keen observational eye, wry sense of humor, and brilliant ability to prise apart the nonsense and find the tiny seed of truth at the heart of any situation were unique among his peers (Paul Constant)

What listeners say about Father and Son

Average Customer Ratings

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.