Name: The Dark Dad
Brand: Massey University Press
SKU: 9781991016560
Price: 18.84 GBP
Availability: InStock

The Dark Dad

War and trauma — a daughter’s tale

Mary Kisler

Published by Massey University Press

Temporarily Out-of-Stock Available to Pre-order

£28.99

£18.84

Published: 10-Apr-2025
ISBN: 9781991016560

Paperback / softback
264 Pages
30 Illustrations, black and white

Subjects:
Memoirs

Quantity

Art historian Mary Kisler grew up in the early 1950s with a father who talked little, whose affection she cherished and whose anger she feared. She later came to understand the trauma that lay behind his dark moods: rejection and violence in his childhood and the brutal experience of being a prisoner of war in Italy and then Germany from late 1941 to 1945.<p>In this affecting memoir, she traces back through her father’s life and war record, discovering a man who had suffered but who ultimately found peace of mind among the people he loved most.

Mary Kisler is the Senior Curator, Mackelvie Collection, International Art at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki. Mary earned her master’s degree in art history and Italian at the University of Auckland in 1994. She has been a curator at the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki since 1998, caring for a collection that spans from c.1150 to 1950, a large part of which is European art but which also includes a small collection of Indian miniatures and Japanese ukiyo-e prints. In 2010 Godwit published her book Angels & Aristocrats: Early European Art in New Zealand Public Galleries. In 2019 the Auckland Art Gallery will publish her Hodgkins catalogue raisonnée to accompany a major Hodgkins exhibition.