Scar Tissue
Synopsis
The unnamed narrator is a young Englishman whose mother is dying of Alzheimer’s disease. Her husband dies brokenhearted shortly after her, and the narrator’s wife grows more and more distant from him in the midst of all this. The narrator’s brother, a neurologist, resists his brother’s attempt to find some meaning in these tragedies and asserts that no redemption is possible in the face of death.
Author Biography
Michael Ignatieff was born in Toronto, Canada in May 1947. A regular broadcaster and critic on television and radio, he has hosted many programmes including Channel 4’s Voices, the BBC’s arts programme The Late Show, and the award-winning series Blood and Belonging: Journeys into the New Nationalism.
His first book, A Just Measure of Pain: Penitentiaries in the Industrial Revolution, 1780-1850, a study of the English penal system, was published in 1978. The Russian Album is a memoir of his family’s experience in nineteenth-century Russia and its subsequent exile to Europe and, eventually, Canada. It won the Governor General’s Award for Non-Fiction (Canada) and the Heinemann Award. His first novel, Asya, was followed by Scar Tissue, which was shortlisted for both the Booker Prize for Fiction and the Whitbread Novel Award. His biography of Isaiah Berlin, Isaiah Berlin: A Life, the result of ten years’ research was shortlisted for both the Jewish Quarterly Literary Prize for Non-Fiction and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.
