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  • Sins of My Father

  • A Daughter, a Cult, a Wild Unravelling
  • By: Lily Dunn
  • Narrated by: Lily Dunn
  • Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins
  • 4.4 out of 5 stars (36 ratings)
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Sins of My Father

By: Lily Dunn
Narrated by: Lily Dunn
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Summary

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

What listeners say about Sins of My Father

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

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.

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The book I’ve been waiting for…

This is the book I have been waiting for someone to write for for years! Strangely, as I listened to her story, I realised she could have almost been telling my own. Thank you for sharing your experience Lily, it helped me unpick so much of my own.

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Brilliant and insightful.

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.

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A fantastic memoir

This is one of the most beautiful memoirs I’ve ever read (listened to!) Lily Dunn’s words captivated me from the very first to the very last.
Once I’d finished this book, I went straight back to the beginning to hear it again. The story is deeply sad in parts and her descriptions of the places she lived, the people who came into her life, and the emotional turmoil she had to endure from such a young age is exquisitely written. The exploration of her relationship with her transient, neglectful father and his hopeless addictions, met with her ceaseless often confusing love for him, is fascinating.
This is a fantastic book, it has haunted me, and lead me to read more about the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh story, watch the documentary Wild Wild Country and begin Tim Guest’s book My Life in Orange, which she often refers to in the book.

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Beautifully written

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.

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An exquisite memoir

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.

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Candour, Vulnerability and Visceral Honesty

Just finished “The Sins of My Father and what an absolutely beautiful - gut wrenching - bereft - full of longing for belonging and love - brimming with candour, vulnerability and visceral honesty literally , in the authors own words x

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Loved this book

So moving and beautifully read. Sad and painful too. But I found it fascinating. Bravo

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So good

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

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Brilliant

Searingly honest and beautifully written. I couldn’t put this down. A daughter’s insightful reflection on her relationship with her emotionally absent father who cannot bring himself to prioritise his children over himself.

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