The Family Clause

By: Jonas Hassen Khemiri

Narrated by: Oliver J. Hembrough

An addictive novel about contemporary parenthood and modern family life.

A grandfather returns home from abroad to visit his adult children. The son is a failure. The daughter is having a baby with the wrong man. Only the grandfather, the proud patriarch, is perfect - at least, according to himself.

Over the course of 10 intense days, the relationships of this chaotic and entirely normal family unfold and painful memories resurface. Something has to give. But the son is duty-bound to his father through an arrangement they call ‘the father clause’. Can it be renegotiated, or will it bind everyone to the past forever?

In The Family Clause, multi-award-winning writer Jonas Hassen Khemiri has created a tender, funny and bruising novel about what it means to be a good parent, the difficulty of understanding those closest to us and how it sometimes takes courage just to stick around. An ode to families, their dynamics, their boundaries and their silences, in all their messy glory, it reveals one of the real challenges in life: how to stop your family defining your destiny.

©2018 Jonas Hassen Khemiri (P)2020 W. F. Howes Ltd

Critic reviews

"A beautiful study of familial need and mess...insightful till it hurts." (Nikita Lalwani)

"Bold and remarkable...full of heart and compassion." (Dinaw Mengestu)

Tweaking relations

After plowing through +700 pages of Systrarna I felt an urge for more. And listening to The Family Clause brought just that, hilarious focus on the little ones, with parents barely able to recall the love that brought them together. Says a father who is a son, and a grandfather, and whose feet are hurting.