About this item
Highlights
- Called "a near-seamless meshing of family feeling, history and imagination" by the New York Times Book Review and the inspiration for the film starring Kate Winslet.Escaping gray London in 1972, a beautiful, determined mother takes her daughters, aged five and seven, to Morocco in search of adventure, a better life, and maybe love.
- Author(s): Esther Freud
- 192 Pages
- Fiction + Literature Genres, Literary
Description
Book Synopsis
Called "a near-seamless meshing of family feeling, history and imagination" by the New York Times Book Review and the inspiration for the film starring Kate Winslet.
Escaping gray London in 1972, a beautiful, determined mother takes her daughters, aged five and seven, to Morocco in search of adventure, a better life, and maybe love.
Hideous Kinky follows two little English girls -- the five-year-old narrator and Bea, her seven-year-old sister -- as they struggle to establish some semblance of normal life on a trip to Morocco with their hippie mother, Julia. Once in Marrakech, Julia immerses herself in Sufism and her quest for personal fulfillment, while her daughters rebel -- the older by trying to recreate her English life, the younger by turning her hopes for a father on a most unlikely candidate.
Rediscover this transporting modern classic about the spirit of freedom, filled with the sights, smells and textures of twentieth century Morocco. Shocking and wonderful, Hideous Kinky is at once melancholy and hopeful.
A remarkable debut novel from one of England's finest young writers, Hideous Kinky was inspired by the author's own experiences as a child. Esther Freud, daughter of the artist Lucian Freud and great-granddaughter of Sigmund Freud, lived in Marrakech for one and a half years with her older sister Bella and her mother.
Review Quotes
"Genuine and endearing... Esther Freud is adroit at capturing the way adult follies appear to a child and she has a gift for unstated hilarity... Like the sword swallowers in the marketplace, she manages to make it look effortless." -- Los Angeles Times
"Whimsical, evocative, heartfelt... Synthesizing a blur of images, Hideous Kinky is a song of childhood exile, a paean to the troublesome beauty of life on the run." -- New York Times
"Funny and appealing... It has a delightful lightness of being." -- Times Literary Supplement (London)