Every Time We Say Goodbye - Tapa blanda

On 17th November 1989 Anna Blundy received a phonecall to say that her father, David Blundy, a foreign correspondant, had been shot reporting the war in El Salvador. In a way it was the phonecall she had been expecting all her life. Every time they said goodbye, she knew he might not return. Eight years later, in April 1997, Anna went to El Salvador to try to discover the truth about his death, and finally, after a decade of mourning, to come to terms with her loss. During her trip Anna, now a journalist herself, revisits her childhood and the world she and her father inhabited. Memories of the succession of lonely hotel bedrooms in exotic locations, the painful goodbyes, and the midnight phonecalls sometimes punctuated by the sound of gunfire. Every time she turned on the TV she imagined news of his death in some dusty foreign war. This is also an honest insight into the relationship between father and daughter - her fear of not fulfilling his expectations; of being supplanted by a new girlfriend or by the birth of a younger sister; of how her world collapsed the day when he died. This is a sharp but beautifully written account interweaving humour and bittersweet recollection.

Anna Blundy was born in north London in 1970. She went to City of London School for girls and Westminster School before reading Russian at University College, Oxford. She is now living in Russia for the third time, where she has worked as the singer in a Moscow blues band for a year, and also in television for ABC News, CNN and Sky. She has written for the Guardian, Sunday Times and The Times. She is currently The Times Moscow correspondent and lives in Moscow with her husband, Horatio Mortimer, and their son, Lev.