The Magician's Son. A Search For Identity

Cover Type: Softcover
Book Condition: Good
Jacket Condition: None Issued
Publisher: Viking/Penquin
Publisher Place: Camberwell
Publisher Year: 2005
Edition: First Edition

Description: 309 pages. Book is in general good condition. There is some light reading wear present, but still a presentable copy. The Story Of A Boy Who Was Taken From His Family And Told They'd Never Existed.

Publishers Description: Extract'You're a little Nazi bxxxxxd,' Ian said to me.Ian was in my class at school. He was a tubby kid with what I have always remembered as a streak of cruelty. How fair this is I can't say, but over the years I've thought of him as one of the bad guys. Reflecting on it now, I see that I actually owe him a lot. Without him I might never have embarked on the journey that followed.I have no clear recollection of the circumstances of Ian's announcement. I don't even remember where he said it or why. But it was sufficient to move the tectonic plates of my being, and in the aftershocks that followed, the details were swept away. There are moments that change things. This was one of them. I was nine years old.Ian's tone had been matter-of-fact. He was simply telling me something that he believed, rather than being vindictive. Nevertheless his revelation took a while to sink in. There were a couple of new words to check out for a start. At nine I had no idea what 'Nazi' or 'bastard' meant, although it didn't take me long to find out. Of course I asked my parents about Ian's comment, but they dismissed it out of hand. The notion that I was adopted was, they told me, 'ridiculous'.It took me another few weeks to pluck up the courage to ask Ian's parents. Here, too, I can not recall the exact conversation, but they did confirm that I was adopted. I also remember them making a reference to my mother being a Red Cross nurse during World War II, and to the thousands of children whose parents didn't survive the war. Many of these were still in displaced-persons camps, I was told, and a large number had been sent to New Zealand from orphanages all over Europe and Britain.Years later, when I happened to mention Ian's name to friends in New Zealand , they asked me if I was aware that he too had been adopted. I wasn't. But maybe this explains why he felt strongly enough to make an issue of my situation.As for his parents, I've often wondered why they chose to be so honest with me. Perhaps they had thought through the impact of adoption on a child more than the McCutcheons had. Or maybe Ian was himself one of the children displaced by the war in Europe . Whatever the reason, it's impossible to underestimate the difference their revelation made to my life. I shudder at the thought that they could so easily have lied to me too.The remarkable thing about that unpleasant moment in the schoolyard is that for almost three decades it stood as my very first distinct memory. My recollection of anything before that was shadowy, full of shapes and wraiths, real and imagined. From time to time some more vivid memory would rise, but often it was received memory a“ things told me by others, which I appropriated and claimed as my own. My early memory was a quicksand within a maze. There were no signposts, no markers, and few islands of stability.Having no early memories and no real trust in the future, I grew up living very much in the moment, hanging onto the present as the only reality. Here and now I was safe. Before was dark and dangerous, the future was uncertain.More strangely, I thought that the way my memory operated was normal, that this was what most people experienced. When I heard people reminiscing about their early childhood I considered them either extraordinary or delusional. It was only when I began to look for my past that I realised it was I who was the exception.

ISBN: 9780670042104