NHOJ: A Memoir That Started Backwards by John Lazenby COMING 13 FEB

Hardback
Biteback
13 February 2025

As a journalist and author, John Lazenby has spent more than forty years chronicling the tales of others. But for much of his life he closely guarded his own compelling story – a long and challenging struggle with childhood dyslexia, unable to read or write at a time when neurodiversity was rarely considered or recognised. Sent away to boarding school at the age of seven, John’s future pivoted on the life-changing intervention of a teacher who finally understood the boy whom no one else could teach.

In this warm and poignant memoir, John traces his misadventures through the unforgiving education system of the 1960s, when illiteracy was viewed as a character defect that could be rectified by stern discipline and regular beatings, and takes us on an evocative visit to the not-so-distant past, introducing the kind and eccentric family who never gave up on him – and the array of teachers who did.

We follow the intrepid progress of a boy who could write only one word – his name, spelled backwards – to a man who finally found his true calling after a series of setbacks and false starts, only to make the late discovery that he had travelled through life unaware of a second neurodiversity, hiding in plain sight. Heart-warming, hilarious, raw and shocking, NHOJ is a tribute to overcoming challenges, ignoring barriers and holding on to hope in a world that initially seems to have no place for you.