British · b. 1963
British novelist whose autobiographical debut Hideous Kinky drew on her childhood in Marrakech, and granddaughter of Sigmund Freud through her father Lucian.
Esther Freud was born in London in 1963, the daughter of the painter Lucian Freud and granddaughter of Sigmund Freud. She studied at the Drama Centre London and worked as an actress before writing her debut novel.
Hideous Kinky (1992) drew directly on her childhood experience of being taken by her mother from London to live in Marrakech in the early 1970s — a world of medinas, souks, Sufi mystics, and the colourful chaos of Morocco at the height of the hippie trail. The novel is narrated in the present tense by a five-year-old girl, giving it a luminous, immediate quality. It was adapted into a film in 1998 starring Kate Winslet.
Freud has written seven novels since, including Peerless Flats (1993) and The Sea House (2003). She is married to the playwright David Morrissey. Hideous Kinky remains her most widely read work and one of the essential books about Morocco.
by Esther Freud
In 1914, a Suffolk fishing village. Thomas Maggs, thirteen, befriends an artist named Mr Mac — the Scottish architect and designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh, who spent his final years painting in the Suffolk village of Walberswick.
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by Esther Freud
Two stories separated by fifty years interweave in a Suffolk village: a contemporary woman researching an architect's life, and the architect's story itself — a portrait of a German-Jewish émigré and the house he built on the English coast.
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by Esther Freud
A five-year-old girl's-eye view of Marrakech in the early 1970s, as her unconventional mother pursues Sufi mysticism while her daughters navigate a world of souks, street life, and Moroccan school.
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by Esther Freud
Lisa, sixteen, arrives in London from the country with her mother and younger sister, and tries to make sense of the city, boys, and her own desires. Esther Freud's second novel — a coming-of-age story set in Hackney.
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by Esther Freud
Lara, nineteen, visits her father in Tuscany for the first time — a man she has never really known — and is drawn into his world of artists, expatriates, and complex histories in the Tuscan hills.
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All Esther Freud novels in order — from Hideous Kinky to Mr Mac and Me. The complete guide to her literary fiction, from Morocco to Suffolk, with reading order and best starting points.
guide
New to Esther Freud? Hideous Kinky is the right starting point — but this guide matches different readers to the right Freud novel, from Morocco to Suffolk to Tuscany.
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