Mother Country (2002) is a novel by Libby Purves about a young American computer expert who goes in search of the relatives of his biological father, a teenage heroin addict in 1970s London when she had him who was pronounced an unfit mother and who died soon after giving birth to him. Raised by his paternal grandparents, the young man has never been to England again after being carried off to the United States by his father, who also died young.
Mother Country explores the culture clash between the two nations, drug addiction and rehabilitation, family secrets, and the will to move on in life.
Famous quotes containing the words mother and/or country:
“Doesn’t that show what an old man I am, when I can say to a mother “I love your daughter,” and not get the reply “what are your intentions, and what is your income?””
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)
“O my Brothers! love your Country. Our Country is our home, the home which God has given us, placing therein a numerous family which we love and are loved by, and with which we have a more intimate and quicker communion of feeling and thought than with others; a family which by its concentration upon a given spot, and by the homogeneous nature of its elements, is destined for a special kind of activity.”
—Giuseppe Mazzini (1805–1872)