Susannah Wise in conversation with playwright Amy Rosenthal about the lived experience of inherited trauma and her much-praised debut novel, This Fragile Earth

“In 1938 my father, aged 14, was packed onto a crowded train in his hometown of Vienna and sent to England, without his family, on the Kindertransport…

I was an anxious child. I dreamt frequently and often… My parents could never fathom where all this worry came from, but I think I know.

I am sure that I inherited my father's trauma… My mother had also suffered a very difficult childhood. Inadvertently, I had been gifted an epigenetic double whammy.

In early 2015, my dad… was informed by his oncologist that the previously slow-moving and turgid form of prostate cancer he had had for some years was now galloping, and there was nothing more the medics could do. I was devastated.

That night saw me lying in bed drawing up the lengthiest catastrophic fantasy I had ever created. My childlike coping mechanism, my method of diverting real pain into stories, had returned. What was the worst that could possibly happen to me and my then five-year old son, I thought?

In that one hour, although I did not know it at the time, I had dreamt up the entire plot to my debut, This Fragile Earth.

Unequivocally and in every way, my father's death was the inception of my career as an author. It was his last best gift to me. My book is dedicated to him.”