by JohnGross (Author)
John Gross was the son of a Jewish doctor who practised in Mile End at the time of WW2. His parents were the children of immigrants, steeped in the language and traditions of a European past, yet outside the home he grew up in a very English world of schools and books. Looking back on his childhood he reflects on this double inheritance. The richness of Yiddish words, the rituals of religion set against the daily life of the East End, where gangsters were heroes and patients turned up on the doorstep at all hours. Yet in the background lies the shadow of anti-Semitism and the Holocaust. A Double Thread is a marvellously vivid picture of a lost London and a vanished culture but it is also the story of an imaginative boy discovering his own path, through books andfilms and school - away from the East End into the new freedoms of a literary life.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 208
Edition: New e.
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 06 Jun 2002
ISBN 10: 0099422263
ISBN 13: 9780099422266
Book Overview: A fascinating and unusual memoir of growing up in London's East End and a profound reflection on living with two separate yet entwined legacies, Jewish and English.
Prizes: Shortlisted for Jewish Quarterly Wingate Literary Prize: Non-fiction 2002 and Jewish Quarterly Wingate Literary Prize for Non-fiction 2002.