A "beautifully written, funny and deeply moving" memoir about a son's reckoning with his father's political idealism, set against the menacing backdrop of apartheid-era South Africa (Finuala Dowling, author of The Man Who Loved Crocodile Tamers) A bestselling South African writer known for tackling history and memory finally makes his American debut
Witty and deeply poignant, My Thirty-Minute Bar Mitzvah is a breathtaking account of one man being confronted by his past, and how his daughter finally proved to be the key in understanding his own father.
Recreating 1960s Johannesburg through his adolescent eyes, bestselling South African author Denis Hirson writes of the silences that weighed on his family and his developing consciousness of his Jewish heritage.
Denis's father, Baruch Hirson, a lecturer in mathematics and member of the African Resistance Movement, was convicted in 1964 for sabotage. Early on in his father's imprisonment, on Denis's 13th birthday, Baruch had been allowed to spend half an hour with his son and 2 prison officers in the back of a Volkswagen Beetle in a prison car park while Denis's mother sat watching what Denis refers to as his 30 minute bar mitzvah from the family car.
Denis left South Africa in 1973 at the age of 22 when, following his father's release from prison, his family were given 3 days to pack up their home and leave by ship.
My Thirty-Minute Bar Mitzvah is a gem of a book about becoming a man. It's also a valuable account of a forgotten time of white, Jewish activists, their families, their community, and most importantly, their children, who had to stumble through life in the aftermath of their commitment.
Industry Reviews
'Hilarious and heart-breaking. Hirson has the ability to evoke not just the city of his childhood, but his own thirteen-year-old voice and imagination of the world - with its perceptions, terrors and incomprehensions' - William Kentridge
'A potent story of a diaspora coming-of-age... [A] moving, historically significant memoir' - Foreword Reviews
'This gem of a book is truly a gift for readers' - Vrye Weekblad
'Poetic... The intensity and honesty Hirson brings to his narrative brings it close to the reader... Singular' - News24
'Beautifully written, funny and deeply moving, My Thirty-Minute Bar Mitzvah is a perfect memoir' - Finuala Dowling, author of The Man who Loved Crocodile Tamers
