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A cremation caper: Stealing Dad, by Sofka Zinovieff, reviewed

Part grief-memoir, part macabre escapade, Zinovieff’s latest book is inspired by her own father’s bizarre strictures regarding his funeral

10 May 2025

9:00 AM

10 May 2025

9:00 AM

Stealing Dad Sofka Zinovieff

Corsair, pp.304, 20

Sophocles’s Antigone is a battle over the burial of a body and the war between law and divinity. What rules – the decree of a king or conscience? This is the crux of Sofka Zinovieff’s Stealing Dad.

When Alekos, a Greek sculptor, is struck down in 2018 by a heart attack and drowns in a London canal, he leaves behind not just a spiky widow, Heather, but seven children and five colourful ex-wives.

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