Toy Fights

A Boyhood - 'A classic of its kind' William Boyd

Don Paterson

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English

Faber & Faber
16 April 2024

Autobiography: general

'A classic of its kind.' - William Boyd'Thought-provoking, hilarious, sardonic and scarily brilliant.' - Scotsman 'A work of dazzling craft.' - Times Literary Supplement 'A memoir in a million.' - Sunday Times

Don Paterson was born in Dundee, Scotland, in 1963. He spent his boyhood on a council housing estate.

When he wasn't busy dreading his birthdays, dodging kids who wanted to kill him in a game of Toy Fights, working with his country-and-western singer dad, obsessing over God, origami, sex or Scottish football cards, he was developing a sugar addiction, playing guitar and descending into madness. While he didn't manage to figure out who he was meant to be, the first twenty years of his life - before he took a chance, packed his guitar and boarded a train to London - did, for better or worse, shape who he would become.

'A book that swan-dives into the filthy waters of growing up and resurfaces clear-eyed, bearing pearls.' - Financial Times 'Paterson is arguably Scotland's finest writer at work today, his sense of the absurd is acutely honed, his wisdom hard-won.' - The National 'Wonderful, aggressively wise and always - especially at its most serious - devastatingly funny.' - Geoff Dyer

By: Don Paterson
Imprint: Faber & Faber
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Edition: Main
Dimensions: Height: 198mm, Width: 130mm, Spine: 24mm
Weight: 313g
ISBN: 9780571240289
ISBN 10: 0571240283
Pages: 384
Publication Date: 16 April 2024
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Don Paterson was born in Dundee in 1963. His poetry collections include Nil Nil, God's Gift to Women, Landing Light, Rain, 40 Sonnets and Zonal. He is the author of three books of aphorism - The Book of Shadows, The Blind Eye and The Fall at Home - as well as translations of Antonio Machado and Rainer Maria Rilke. He is also the author of Reading Shakespeare's Sonnets, Smith: A Reader's Guide to the Poetry of Michael Donaghy, and The Poem: Lyric, Sign, Metre. His poetry has won many awards, including the Whitbread Poetry Prize, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the Costa Poetry Award, all three Forward Prizes, and the T. S. Eliot Prize on two occasions. He was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 2009. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, the English Association and the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and teaches at the University of St Andrews, where he is Professor of Poetry. Since 1997 he has been Poetry Editor at Picador Macmillan. For many years he has also worked as a jazz musician and composer. He lives in Edinburgh.