Tissue is both an autobiography and a comment on the autobiographical process. The first part describes a life lived in four countries: British India, the British colony of Kenya, England and Australia, and the consequences of the end of colonialism for a child that was inadvertently part of it. It also describes a return to Kenya in 2003 to find a lost farm, and a lifelong search for a lost mother and her family in England.
The second part of the book looks at some of the ideas around autobiography that may be taken for granted: issues of memory, identity and time, and cultural narratives that may affect the ways in which autobiographies can be written.
