Description

When Lily Dunn was just six years old, her father left the family home to follow his guru to India, trading domestic life for clothes dyed in oranges and reds and the promise of enlightenment with the cult of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. Since then he has been a mystery to her.

She grew up enthralled by the image of him; effervescent, ambitious and elusive, a writer, publisher and entrepreneur, a man who would appear with gifts from faraway places, and with whom she spent the long, hot summers of her teenage years in Italy, in the company of his wild and wealthy friends.

Yet he was also a compulsive liar, a delinquent, a man who abandoned his responsibilities in a pursuit of transcendence that took him from sex addiction, via the Rajneesh cult, to a relentless chase of money, which ended in ruin and finally addiction to alcohol and prescription drugs.

A detective story that charts two colliding narratives, Sins of My Father is a daughter’s attempt to unravel the mysteries of a father who believed himself to be beyond reproach. A dazzling work of literary memoir, it asks how deep legacies of shame and trauma run, and if we can reconcile unconditional love with irreparable damage.

Publisher Review

I was obsessed with SINS OF MY FATHER, a memoir which combines the emotional and the cerebral in telling the story of a life through the prism of a father's influence. The stories of the children of hippies, or parents who chose experimental lifestyles, is fascinating and fertile territory and although this story is Lily's own, she also speaks for a cohort. It is a victory of self-knowledge and compassion, as well as art -- AMY LIPTROT, author of THE OUTRUN SINS OF MY FATHER is stunning. Beautifully crafted and brutally honest, it's a totally mesmerising journey through the outer limits of love -- DAVID WHITEHOUSE, author of ABOUT A SON In SINS OF MY FATHER Lily Dunn has created an almost forensic analysis of the curse of the Charismatic Dad - on himself, his family and specifically here on his little daughter, who grows up under the desperate double shadow cast by addiction and devoted love, and finally in this memoir does all the painstaking, heartbreaking, ultimately fulfilling work that her father couldn't do -- LOUISA YOUNG, author of YOU LEFT EARLY SINS OF MY FATHER is forensic in its compassion and precise in its love: an extraordinary account of an extraordinary life that produces great empathy for the universals of human frailty -- JENN ASHWORTH, author of GHOSTED Sins of My Father is an intensely gripping memoir about the love between a daughter and a father. There's no end to the ways this father tests his loved ones, yet still his family keeps on trying and hoping for the best. A heart-stoppingly brilliant read that is as brutal and funny as it is raw and candid. I really wanted the craziness to stop - but I never wanted this book to end -- VIV GROSKOP, author of I LAUGHED, I CRIED In this compelling memoir, Lily Dunn confronts the legacies of trauma and dysfunction that surround her complicated father. She writes with searing honesty and clarity, exploring what it means to step away from the shadow of our family and find our own voice -- LULAH ELLENDER, author of ELISABETH'S LISTS SINS OF MY FATHER is a moving story about a golden, gifted family and their paradise lost. About a daughter escaping the dense gravitational pull of a charismatic father through the act of writing. By turns tender and forensic, loving then fierce, this book will speak to anyone who has had to love and let go -- TANYA SHADRICK, author of THE CURE FOR SLEEP SINS OF MY FATHER is a powerful, necessary, brilliantly brave book. It is superlative; it hums and flies and sings. It is moving and true -- MARINA BENJAMIN, authof of INSOMNIA Lily Dunn manages the magic trick of rendering pain exquisite, and making beautiful the vacillation between heart and head, love and reason that characterises human relationships. The heady honesty of this book will reverberate in me for a long time -- ZOE GILBERT, author of MISCHIEF ACTS Sins of My Father is a devastating work of love, pain and hope. Lily Dunn has created art and insight from chaos, joy and suffering -- SOFKA ZINOVIEFF, author of PUTNEY In Sins of My Father Lily Dunn deftly explores the complexity of her father's choices; it's a startling book that will resonate with anyone who has loved a difficult parent and spent a lifetime trying to work them out -- ALI MILLAR, author of THE LAST DAYS