Our Fathers

Andrew O'Hagan

See the full ranking

Our Fathers won the Whitbread Award and was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Hugh Bawn was a modern hero, a visionary urban planner, a man of the people who revolutionized Scotland's residential development after the Second World War. But times have changed. Now, as he lies dying in one of his own failed buildings, his grandson Jamie comes home to watch over him. The old man's final months bring Jamie to see what is best and worst in the past that haunts them all, and he sees the fears of his own life unravel in the land that bred him. It is Jamie who tells the story of his family, of three generations of pride and delusion, of nationality and strong drink, of Catholic faith and the end of political idealism. It is a tale of dark hearts and modern houses, of three men in search of Utopia. A poignant and powerful reclamation of the past, Our Fathers is a deeply felt, beautifully crafted, utterly unforgettable novel.