Books

Antigona and Me

Kate Clanchy

‘An absolutely wonderful book’ – Deborah Moggach

In a London street at the turn of the twenty-first century, two neighbours start to chat over the heads of their children.

Kate Clanchy is a writer, privileged and sheltered. Antigona is a refugee from Kosovo. On instinct, Kate offers Antigona a job as a nanny, and Antigona accepts. Over the next five years and a thousand cups of coffee Antigona’s extraordinary story slowly emerges. She has escaped from a war, she has divorced a violent husband, but can she escape the harsh code she was brought up with?

At the kitchen table where anything can be said, the women discover they have everything, as well as nothing, in common.

Paperback

ISBN: 9781800751866

Published: January 4, 2024

Ebook

ISBN: 9781800751859

Published: June 2, 2022

Category:
Non-fiction

Reviews for Antigona and Me

‘A compelling portrait of an extraordinary woman, written with a poet’s precision … A powerfully written, refreshingly honest work’ – Observer

‘Educational, entertaining, moving’ – Scotsman

‘An exploration of being female, of cultural conditioning and of sisterhood’ – New Statesman

‘Her book is a tribute to their friendship. But it is also about the vulnerability of marginal women, of whom Antigona’s fate is tragically emblematic’ – Sunday Times

‘Clanchy grapples with guilt in employing a woman to do her housework, re-evaluates her approach to motherhood and is shocked by the Malesis insistence on shame and revenge. It is Antigona’s determination to escape those ancient values that threaten to rip apart her family and push her to the brink of self-destruction. Clanchy tells this heart-rending story with lucid intellectual rigour and instinctive compassion‘ – Daily Mail

‘What Clanchy learns about herself, about her country and the way it treats those who seek protection – all of this is as painful, flawed and true as what she learns about Antigona and Albania’ – Independent

Author

Kate Clanchy

Kate Clanchy is a writer, teacher and journalist. Her poetry collection Slattern won a Forward Prize. Her short story ‘The Not-Dead and the Saved’ won both the 2009 BBC National Short Story Award and the VS Pritchett Memorial Prize. Her novel Meeting the English was shortlisted for the Costa Book Award. Her BBC 3 radio programme about her work with students was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes prize. In 2018 she was awarded an MBE for services to literature, and an anthology of her students’ work, England: Poems from a School, was published to great acclaim. In 2019 she published Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me, a book about her experience of teaching in state schools for several decades, which won the Orwell Prize for Political Writing; and in 2020 published How to Grow Your Own Poem, which Hollie McNish described as ‘the best book I’ve read about how to practise writing poetry’.