Comparisons of Stefánie Faludi’s two reinventions – first as an all-American father and then as a repatriated Hungarian grande dame – could have been crass. Yet the points are never laboured. “Which has been easier for you,” Faludi asks her father, “to be accepted as a woman after being born a man, or to be accepted as a Magyar after being born a Jew?” Her father picks “woman”, explaining that this is what is now on her birth certificate. Later, Faludi finds the old official family documents, all of which mention one fact about the Friedmans: Jew. Some identities can be escaped, or self-fashioned; others appear indelible, imposed.
Susan Faludi’s memoir of her father Istvan Friedman, Steven Faludi, and Stefanie. (New Statesman)