My Son’s Father

The first in Dom Moraes’ trilogy of autobiographies, My Son’s Father is a coming of age account of growing up in Bombay and Oxbridge of the 1950s, by a man who has been called the poet of his generation. Dom Moraes’ childhood in Bombay was as privileged as it was lonely—peopled by his father’s frequent absences. As he says in the opening lines, ‘Missing my father is my first real memory of him.’ It was also a time of conflicted emotions and, frequently, terror. As Moraes’ beautiful mother, Beryl, sank gradually from neurosis to madness, she swung between smothering the young Dom with love, and subjecting him to a variety of bizarre and sometimes violent punishments—a relationship that left him deeply scarred for life.