Mothers, Fathers, and Others

'Dizzyingly flexible, deeply human, often funny, it blasts aside our preconceptions and urges us to see the world as it is' i

Feminist philosophy meets family memoir in Siri Hustvedt's most personal essay collection yet, a scintillating and profound exploration of motherhood, the maternal and misogyny.

Ranging across artistic mothers such as Jane Austen and Louise Bourgeois, psychoanalysis, science, literature and ethnography, this is a polymath's journey into urgent questions about familial love and hate, human prejudice and cruelty, and the transformative power of art. Fierce, moving and witty, it warns against drawing hard and fast borders where none exist.

'The voice is consistent, combining assured erudition with more playful questioning, always thoughtful and capable of surprising shifts of register and even genre' Lara Feigel, Guardian