Homework: A Memoir - Hardcover

by Geoff Dyer (Author)

Named a most anticipated book of 2025 by Vulture The Guardian Financial Times The Observer The Times (London) Literary Hub

"A picture of postwar England unlike any other . . . A highly original memoir that will provoke, amuse, beguile--and endure." --Antony Quinn, Financial Times

"Homework is wonderful Geoff-Dyer writing, which we've all learned to crave; something to delight and to move us and to edify us on every page. I find him an irresistible writer." --Richard Ford

A portrait of a young boy, who keeps passing exams--and of a changing England in the 1960s and 1970s.

The only child of a sheet-metal worker and a dinner lady who worked at the canteen of the local school, Geoff Dyer grew up in a world shaped by memories of the Depression and the Second World War. But far from being a story of hardship overcome, this loving memoir is a celebration of opportunities afforded by the postwar settlement, of which the author was an unconscious beneficiary. The crux comes at the age of eleven with the exam that decided the future of generations of British schoolkids: secondary modern or the transformative possibilities of grammar school? One of the lucky winners, Dyer goes to grammar school, where he develops a love of literature (and beer and prog rock).

Mapping a path from primary school through the tribulations of teenage sport, gig-going, romantic fumblings, fights (well, getting punched in the face), and other misadventures with comic affection, Homework takes us to the threshold of university, where Dyer gets the first intimations that a short geographical journey--just forty miles--might extend to the length of a life.

Recalling an eroded but strangely resilient England, Homework traces, in perfectly phrased and hilarious detail, roots that extend into the deep foundations of class society.

Author Biography

Geoff Dyer is the award-winning author of many books, including The Last Days of Roger Federer, Out of Sheer Rage, Yoga for People Who Can't Be Bothered to Do It, Zona, See/Saw, and the essay collection Otherwise Known as the Human Condition (winner of a National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism). Dyer is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a writer in residence at the University of Southern California. His books have been translated into twenty-four languages.