“If you didn’t know whether to risk saying something, what’s the worst that could happen? So they call you pisher!”
The word “pisher” – a Yiddish term for a person of no importance – was one of the words that filled the boyhood of the acclaimed children’s writer and campaigner Michael Rosen, whose early life is entertainingly captured in this lively memoir. What is said and not said within families is paramount to his moving story, which opens with Rosen learning, aged 10, about an elder brother who had died before he was born.
Rosen’s trademark style and humour are everywhere in his pared-down prose, evoking the north London suburbs with his communist parents, Harold and Connie, who first met as impoverished teenagers in the Jewish East End of the 1930s.
From memories of his Shakespeare-quoting father, to forging his own path towards becoming a professional writer, this memoir is also a powerful love letter to literature.
• So They Call You Pisher! A Memoir by Michael Rosen is published by Verso (£16.99). To order a copy for £14.44 go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99
