A Life in Pieces

Christopher Robinson

nën 2023 · Troubador Publishing Ltd

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Young Bartholomew, just out of university, finds himself charged with the task of going out to Thailand to sort and possibly edit and publish the papers of his dead grandfather, Ta. Whilst he knew that his Ta was gay, Bart is initially a little shocked by the material he finds. He becomes caught up in the task of piecing together the man who wrote them and begins to ask himself new questions about how we perceive and understand ourselves.

Bart decides to publish the book about his grandfather’s journey growing up as a closeted gay boy in 1950’s and 1960’s England. It follows his journey in finding other possible selves both in the very different society of Greece in the 60’s and in the transformative possibilities of amateur acting. And after getting lost in the stifling atmosphere of an academic career and trying, through marriage and fatherhood, to mould himself into a ‘self’ which he could not maintain, Ta ostensibly finds release and a new sense of possibilities in Thailand. But was the new self any less fictive than earlier ones?

In A Life in Pieces follow Bart and his grandfather, Ta, as they journey to find their true selves and understand their identities.

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Christopher Robinson was a university lecturer, Fellow of an Oxford college and eventually Professor of European Literature in Oxford from the age of twenty-four until his retirement in 2004. He has since spent much of his time in Thailand and has written two volumes of stories about his life there. These stories focus on Thai social norms and how they challenge Western assumptions, particularly about gender and sexuality. He has a wife and three children but came out as gay in 1991.