Graeme Friedman

The stories in Marilyn’s Dress are set in South Africa during the tumultuous years of Nelson Mandela and beyond, in which the tangled histories of violence and apartheid leak into the lives of ordinary people trying to make sense of what remains.

Graeme Friedman plunges us into the relationships between mother and daughter, author and his writing, student and her subject matter, psychologist and his patient through ruptures in memory and perception, and reveals the impact of the legacies of trauma in a post-democratic South Africa.

Drawing from his years as an expert witness in political trials, Friedman delivers a collection rich with details, insights and heartbreaks that renders a perspective into a wounded society riven by an unforgiving past. Marilyn’s Dress is the latest offering by a masterful storyteller who knows how to handle the hauntings of humanity with compassion, tenderness and nuance.