Ancestors

Maya Jasanoff's book explores ancestry and its defining role in human history, addressing identity politics, displacement, heritage, and community. It asks big questions about belonging, values, and social hierarchies, and demonstrates how every individual story fits into larger communities. Jasanoff's own genealogical background will be investigated against historical patterns and contexts.

Format: Paperback
Publication date: 10 October 2024
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

From Maya Jasanoff, winner of the prestigious Cundhill History Award 2018, comes an extraordinary and major exploration of ancestry and its defining role in human history. In an age of identity politics, with complicated questions of home, displacement, heritage, and community, we have been bowled over by the technology to identify the origins of our ancestors, but we don't necessarily know how to respond to our own historical contexts. This book asks big questions: Who gets to belong in a community and who doesn't? Which people and relationships are valued and which ones aren't? Where do you fit in a social hierarchy and what privileges or disadvantages come with it?

The author of this thrilling work of history is Maya Jasanoff – the multi-award-winning historian, traveler, and biographer. She hails from two ethnicities, two religions, and two continents. She will investigate her own genealogical background by situating her ancestry against historical patterns and contexts and demonstrate how every individual story fits into larger communities.

We cannot pretend ancestry doesn't play a major role in the way identities are formed, informing deep, if rarely acknowledged, assumptions about status, race, ethnicity, and nationhood. This book offers a nuanced, brilliant exploration of us – all of us, worldwide, from the origins of humanity up to the origins of generations today.

Weight: 270g
Dimension: 234 x 153 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780008394356