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Sins of My Father

A Daughter, a Cult, a Wild Unravelling

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About this listen

When Lily Dunn was six years old, her father left for India to join the cult of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. She grew up enthralled by the myth of him—a brilliant, charismatic writer and entrepreneur who would appear with gifts from faraway places. Yet he was also a compulsive liar whose pursuit of transcendence took him from sex addiction, via the Rajneesh cult, to a relentless chase of money, which ended in ruin and finally addiction to alcohol and prescription drugs. A daughter's investigation into a father who was always out of reach, Sins of My Father is a gripping detective story that asks how much we can forgive of those we love.

©2022 Lily Dunn (P)2022 Orion Publishing Group Mental Health Psychology Psychology & Mental Health Religious Studies Heartfelt
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This was by far one of the best memoirs I have ever read. I devoured it in three days and I have since read it again. Dunn’s story is fascinating and her writing is so clever and touching. Her honesty makes the reader feel as though we know her and her late father with all of his foibles. Can’t recommend it highly enough.

One of the most moving memoirs I’ve ever read.

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Lily Dunn has written unflinchingly about her father and her relationship with him in this exquisite, sometimes tender, other times brutal memoir. The writing is lyrical and poetic, Dunn’s description of her fatally flawed father and his peripatetic life are achingly related, until his death at the meager age of fifty nine. Dunn manages to explore her father’s shifting addictions, his careless cruelty towards his children as he pursues his desires and attempts to escape his own demons, which she relates early on in the memoir. Through the decades we glimpse how Dunn’s father is both a victim and a perpetrator, and Dunn herself must struggle to find freedom beyond the spell he cast upon her in her early years. I highly recommend this memoir to anyone interested in human nature, addiction, relationships or simply achingly beautiful writing.

An exquisite memoir

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Being of the same generation as the author and growing up in North London with an artist father who left me and my sister, this memoir really resonated with me, the similar feelings and experiences made me really reflect. So well written, the complexities of addiction and the effects it has on the people around you and how it also shapes their lives is so powerful.

Beautifully written

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Beautifully read by the author. Highly recommend. I could relate in different ways to various characters and it has left me with much to think about. A rare insight into the subject matter - alcoholism, delusion, separation and the impact of all of these on the central character and her family.

Brilliant and insightful.

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For those of us who loved/love their difficult, damaged, selfish father who left, this is sometimes a little too good a book.

So good

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