In the Darkroom, Susan Faludi

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and bestselling author of âe~Backlashâe(tm), an astonishing confrontation with the enigma of her father and the larger riddle of identity consuming our age. âeoeIn the summer of 2004 I set out to investigate someone I scarcely knew, my father. The project began with a grievance, the grievance of a daughter whose parent had absconded from her life. I was in pursuit of a scofflaw, an artful dodger who had skipped out on so many things âe" obligation, affection, culpability, contrition. I was preparing an indictment, amassing discovery for a trial. But somewhere along the line, the prosecutor became a witnessâe¦âe So begins Susan Faludiâe(tm)s extraordinary inquiry into the meaning of identity in the modern world and her own haunted family saga. When the feminist writer learned that her 76-year-old father âe" long estranged and living in Hungary âe" had undergone sex reassignment surgery, that investigation would turn personal and urgent. How was this new parent who claimed to be âe~a complete woman nowâe(tm) connect to the silent, explosive and ultimately violent father that she had known, the photographer whoâe(tm)d built his career on the alteration of images? Faludi chases that mystery into the recesses of her suburban childhood and her fatherâe(tm)s many previous incarnations: American dad, Alpine mountaineer, swashbuckling adventurer in the Amazon outback, Jewish fugitive in Holocaust Budapest. When the author travels to Hungary to reunite with her father, she drops into a labyrinth of dark histories and dangerous politics in a country hell-bent on repressing its past and constructing a fanciful âe" and virulent âe" nationhood. The search for identity that has transfixed our century was proving as treacherous for nations as