Hard Joy

<p><span style=color: rgba(51 51 51 1)>This compelling memoir of Susan Varga's life spans seven decades and circles between Australia and Europe activism and seclusion everyday life and the writing life.</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style=color: rgba(51 51 51 1)>She was born into war-torn Budapest but her family escaped loss and trauma to make a new life in Sydney. Susan makes another escape from the narrow confines of suburbia into the arms of the exciting and contradictory world of the Sydney Push. As a young woman she lives in London Paris Bendigo and Holland before returning to Sydney keen to take part of Gough Whitlam's reformist agenda in a powerful time of change.</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style=color: rgba(51 51 51 1)>Yet Susan also spends a long time lost in the wilderness wrestling with the raft of dilemmas of the life of a woman. When she finally commits to the demands and joys of writing and to a surprising love her life assumes a new harmony. Fate then intervenes to throw up major challenges testing her will to re-find the hard joys of life.</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style=color: rgba(51 51 51 1)>In this memoir Susan Varga moves through the intersections between her own life and the wider world with an incisive portrait of our times.</span></p>