100 Letters Home

Adam Aitken's evocative memoir probes the reasons his father married his mother, an 'Asian woman', by researching family history, experimenting with Plots A, B, and C, and intertextual references to Christopher Koch's 1995 novel 'Highways to a War', Graham Greene's 'The Quiet American', and Marcel Proust's 'Swann's Way' translated into Thai by his uncle. He tests the construction of his hybridity, the notion of his Asian 'face' and where it might be welcome, and where and with whom a trans-Asian citizen belongs.
-Gay Lynch, Transnational Literature

There is no labyrinth more difficult to thread, no enigma more baffling, than that represented by our own parents; nor any quest for understanding more seductive, indeed necessary, to attempt. In One Hundred Letters Home Adam Aitken has accomplished the impossible with grace, acumen, humour, pathos and a beautiful sense of when to stand back and let the story tell-or not tell-itself. He has also given us a unique insight into the Asian-Australian milieu of the second half of the twentieth century. And something else as well: a passionate excursion amongst the perils and illuminations of soul-making.
-Martin Edmond

Adam Aitken was born in London. He has enjoyed many foreign residencies and workshops in Hong Kong and Hawai'i. He teaches Creative writing and English at the University of Technology, Sydney, and is the author of 'Romeo and Juliet in Subtitles', 'In One House' and 'Eighth Habitation'.