Synopsis
In a Cairo clinic, Ronny recovers from gender-affirming surgery. Her grandmother, mother and then Ronny herself sift through their pasts in search of what has led to this radical self-transformation. From decades of Home Counties respectability emerge buried family secrets - of hidden love, thwarted hopes and desires, stifled by conformity and the bonds of duty from which Ronny has broken free.
First published in 1989, A Curious Child is innovative for being written from the perspective of a transgender person and her family. Amaurea Press is very happy to be bringing this back into print. Now with an Introduction, written by Dr Kit Heyam, author of 'Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender.'
About the Authors
Richard Walker spent part of his childhood in Ghana, read English at Oxford, and worked in Canada, Spain and Kuwait, before joining the British Council. Most of his subsequent professional life was spent travelling the world as a senior Director for the British Council. It brought him postings in Bangkok, New Delhi, São Paolo, Lagos, Cyprus, Athens, Brussels and Hong Kong. Now he divides his time between his home in Oxford, and the house and garden he and Lauren created by a Venetian town in the Peloponnese. Several of his stories and plays have been broadcast by the BBC, and in 1989 he published his first novel, A Curious Child - now republished by Amaurea Press, who in 2025 also published Richard's memoir, Highlife, & my other lives. He was awarded an OBE in 1998 for Indo-British cultural relations.
Kit Heyam is a writer, a university lecturer, a queer history activist and a trans awareness trainer who has worked with organisations across the UK. They have been committed to queer history since their teens, when they found the sense of community they were lacking by identifying with queer figures from the past. Their first book, The Reputation of Edward II, 1305-1697: A Literary Transformation of History (Amsterdam University Press, 2020), was the first account of how fourteenth-century English king Edward II acquired his queer reputation. They have also published work on gender in museums, trans possibilities in First World War internment camps and naked pictures in early modern anatomy books, and they have appeared as a guest expert on queer history on BBC2, Radio New Zealand and local BBC radio. Kit is passionate about finding ways to tell new stories about gender and sexuality in the past and has worked with museums including the Henry Moore Institute and British Library exhibitions team to help develop their trans representation. They coordinate the cardboard Rainbow Plaques project, which makes hidden queer history visible, and lead queer history tours in their home city of Leeds based on the app they developed for Heritage Lottery Funded project West Yorkshire Queer Stories. They are also a volunteer organiser of the award-winning Leeds Queer Film Festival.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
