Romulus, My Father

When Raimond Gaita’s memoir Romulus, My Father was published in 1998, the acclaim with which it was greeted was ubiquitous. The book was significant not simply because it was a strikingly revealing personal narrative written by a renowned philosopher, but because it managed to present a story that contained large doses of personal tragedy without rendering the experience of reading it either falsely uplifting or overwhelmingly depressing. While offering vivid portraits of an inconstant, depressive wife and mother, and a self-possessed husband and father struggling with his own sense of self-worth, Romulus, My Father celebrated the power of love and friendship in the most subtle, telling and deeply humane ways.