The first memoir from Geoff Dyer, author of Yoga for People Who Can't Be Bothered to Do It, recollecting his childhood and coming of age in postwar Britain

Born in 1958, the only child of a dinner lady and a sheet-metal worker, Geoff Dyer grew up in a world shaped by memories of shortages and the Second World War. It was a time of Airfix models, wargames, conkers and frugality: Geoff's father splurges on a mono record player - before imposing a blockade on buying records.

But far from being a story of hardship overcome, Homework is a celebration of opportunities afforded to Dyer's generation. A grammar-school education leads to books, prog rock (on a new stereo), girls, beer and, eventually, a place at Oxford. He would go on to embrace a life his parents could barely recognise. In Homework, Dyer returns to the source and asks what it means to live through an era of complex social transformation.

Details

ISBN13: 9781837262014
Format: Paperback / softback
Number of Pages: 304
Edition: Main
Publication Date: 25 Aug 2026
Publisher: Canongate Books
Publication City, Country: Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Dimensions (cm): 19.8(H)x12.9(L)x1.8(W)212
Weight (gm): 212

Author Biography

Geoff Dyer is an award-winning author of four novels and numerous non-fiction books, including Out of Sheer Rage, Yoga for People Who Can't Be Bothered to Do It, Zona and, most recently, The Last Days of Roger Federer. A fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Science, Dyer lives in Los Angeles, where he is Writer in Residence at the University of Southern California. His books have been translated into twenty-four languages.

geoffdyer.com

Reviews

Dyer is wonderful on the strangeness of remembering itself * * New York Times * *
Droll, erudite, digressive, self-deprecating, laid-back rather than standup in his humour - the Geoff Dyer voice is unmistakable * * Guardian * *
Homework bursts with working-class pride, a fond and mournful belief in the possibility of the British welfare state * * LA Times * *
If you've read Dyer before then you'll need no persuasion to read this book. If you haven't, it's the perfect place to start -- JOHN SELF * * The Times * *
Geoff Dyer and I nearly share a name and a birth year. We were born in different countries, however, under different circumstances. No matter. Every page of this exquisite, witty memoir brought back a flood of memories and emotions that seemed to be my own, so lovingly and precisely does Dyer articulate them. A heartfelt book by a supremely intelligent writer -- JEFFREY EUGENIDES
While the subject of Homework is ostensibly Geoff Dyer, as ever his interest is really something tangential. Class is "the treacle that gets everywhere in England" . . . Dyer conjures up a Cheltenham of rusty allotment sheds and recycled school dinners -- JOHANNA THOMAS-CORR * * Sunday Times * *
A jacuzzi of a book: soothing and fizzing at the same time -- JOAN BAKEWELL
This acutely observed memoir of postwar England might be the highlight of [Dyer's] illustrious four-decade career . . . This Gloucestershire lad turned boomer Proust is his own man, and he has written a highly original memoir that will provoke, amuse, beguile -- and endure * * Financial Times * *
The Geoff Dyer voice is unmistakeable . . . [an] evocation of a lost era, a postwar culture eager to embrace new freedoms -- BLAKE MORRISON * * Guardian * *
Dyer's most personal book yet, this is a moving but characteristically droll account of family, as well as an astute retrospective on post-war Britain -- LUKE WARDE * * Irish Sunday Independent * *