My father’s only non-African overseas posting was South Korea, which even in the mid-1980s was on the international cultural circuit. Antonia Byatt was one of the British writers who visited under his auspices. Holidaying from school at the time, I took her shopping for pirated cassettes in Itaewon, our local district in Seoul. She visited our house for meals, and, perhaps significantly, spied on our shelves my mother’s collection of novels by Margaret Drabble, her sister.
The house and my parents feature in Loss of Face. The portrait of my mother is not entirely flattering; our home in Durham is referenced, and, by implication, her provincial northern roots. (Unlike Antonia – and my South Shields-born father – my mother retained her regional accent.) She was an infant teacher at the Seoul British School, and her enthusiasm for Beatrix Potter’s books is mentioned somewhat condescendingly. No matter. My parents and two of my former homes appear, albeit in fictionalized form, in a story by a Booker winner. I’ll take the win.
Collected in Sugar and Other Stories, Chatto & Windus, 1987
A Personal Anthology 