Our Fathers: From the author of the Sunday Times bestseller Caledonian Road

Our summary description

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In a high rise tower block he helped establish, Hugh Bawn, modern Scottish hero and legendary social reformer, lies dying. The building stands as both achievement and question mark, and as Hugh’s life narrows, the past begins to press in.

His grandson Jamie comes home to watch over him, and it is Jamie who tells the story. Through him, the novel moves across three generations of family, tracing pride and delusion, nationality and strong drink, Catholic faith and the end of the old left. The intimacies of kinship sit beside the public language of reform, and the promise of modern housing is measured against what it asked people to give up.

Our Fathers is a tale of dark hearts and modern houses, and of three men in search of Utopia, each with their own version of what a better world might look like, and what it might cost. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize.