A Lie About My Father

A moving, unforgettable memoir of two lost men: a father and his child.

He had his final heart attack in the Silver Band Club in Corby, somewhere between the bar and the cigarette machine. A foundling; a fantasist; a morose, threatening drinker who was quick with his hands, he hadn't seen his son for years. John Burnside's extraordinary story of this failed relationship is a beautifully written evocation of a lost and damaged world of childhood and the constants of his father's world: men defined by the drink they could take and the pain they could stand, men shaped by their guilt and machismo.

A Lie About My Father is about forgiving but not forgetting, about examining the way men are made and how they fall apart, about understanding that in order to have a good son you must have a good father.

Saltire Scottish Book of the Year and the Scottish Arts Council Non-Fiction Book of the Year.

"An exceptional book... A brilliant feat of sympathy and imagination"

John Burnside

"Compelling and profoundly moving... This exquisitely written memoir is, literally, a journey into a heart of darkness - a darkness here lit up by beauty and truth" Independent "An exceptional book... A brilliant feat of sympathy and imagination" Financial Times "Burnside's prose is a delight...Memoir this good illuminates something larger than itself. It is an exercise in understanding compassion and forgiveness" -- Melanie McGrath Sunday Telegraph "[An] exquisitely written memoir" -- Paul Bailey Sunday Times "Destined to become a classic of Scots childhood... A beautiful read, but also a brutal one" Scotland on Sunday