The Boy with the Topknot: A Memoir of Love, Secrets and Lies in Wolverhampton is a hilarious and heart-rending reinvention of the modern British memoir.<\/p>\n
“Its 1979, Im three years old, and like all breakfast times during my youth it begins with Mum combing my hair, a ritual for which I have to sit down on the second-hand, floral-patterned settee, and lean forward, like Im presenting myself for execution.”<\/p>\n
For Sathnam Sanghera, growing up in Wolverhampton in the eighties was a confusing business. On the one hand, these were the heady days of George Michael mix-tapes, Dallas on TV and, if he was lucky, the occasional Bounty Bar. On the other, there was his wardrobe of tartan smocks, his 30p-an-hour job at the local sewing factory and the ongoing challenge of how to tie the perfect top-knot.
\nAnd then there was his family, whose strange and often difficult behaviour he took for granted until, at the age of twenty-four, Sathnam made a discovery that changed everything he ever thought he knew about them. Equipped with breathtaking courage and a glorious sense of humour, he embarks on a journey into their extraordinary past – from his fathers harsh life in rural Punjab to the steps of the Wolverhampton Tourist Office – trying to make sense of a life lived among secrets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":27256,"parent":0,"template":"","book_type":[5],"book_author":[2797],"class_list":["post-58247","book","type-book","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","book_type-non-fiction","book_author-sathnam-sanghera"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mybookzone.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/book\/58247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mybookzone.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/book"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mybookzone.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/book"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mybookzone.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mybookzone.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"book_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mybookzone.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/book_type?post=58247"},{"taxonomy":"book_author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mybookzone.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/book_author?post=58247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}