Publisher's Synopsis
WINNER OF THE WELLCOME BOOK PRIZE 2014
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
Most forms of identity within families are passed on from one generation to the next, but less explored are 'horizontal identities', those shared across communities between people with an uncommon trait.
Andrew Solomon spoke to 200 families to record their experience of topics including dwarfism, deafness, transgender, prodigies, and more.
Sometimes your child - the most familiar person of all - is radically different from you. The saying goes that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. But what happens when it does?
Drawing on interviews with over three hundred families, covering subjects including deafness, dwarfs, Down's Syndrome, Autism, Schizophrenia, disability, prodigies, children born of rape, children convicted of crime and transgender people, Andrew Solomon documents ordinary people making courageous choices. Difference is potentially isolating, but Far from the Tree celebrates repeated triumphs of human love and compassion to show that the shared experience of difference is what unites us.
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for General Non-fiction and eleven other national awards.
Winner of the Green Carnation Prize.
'This wise book is a careful and surprising study of difference between parent and child and how it shapes our lives' Stephen Grosz Sunday Telegraph
