---
title: "Great and Unfortunate Things: The Memoir Jason Arday Leaves Behind"
description: What Jason Arday's memoir Great and Unfortunate Things tells, and how critics have received it, following his death days after its US publication.
author: Dr Marina Nani (Editor-in-Chief)
date: 2026-08-16T11:00:00.000Z
updated: 2026-08-17T11:46:12.200Z
canonical: https://richbooksmagazine.com/article/great-and-unfortunate-things-the-memoir-jason-arday-leaves-behind
image: https://cdn.nanimediahouse.com/418Zqj20DOL._SL1000_.jpg
categories: Memoir & Biography
content_type: News
region: United Kingdom
publication: Rich Books
access: members
schema_type: Article
---

Jason Arday's memoir, Great and Unfortunate Things, reached American shelves on 11 August, three days before his death, and remains scheduled to publish in the UK on 27 August. Co-written with Eve Claxton and published by Simon and Schuster, it now arrives under circumstances nobody involved in its making could have anticipated.

The book tells the story of Arday's early life in a council house in south London, one of three sons in a family of Ghanaian heritage. Diagnosed with autism and developmental delays at the age of three, he was told by doctors he would likely never speak, read or live independently, and that institutional care might be the only realistic option. His parents refused that advice. The memoir credits his mother, known throughout as Giff, with the years of determined, resourceful support that followed, drawing on faith, proverbs and popular culture to help her son make sense of the world around him.

According to the book, Arday did not speak until he was around eleven, and did not learn to read or write until he was eighteen, taught phonics by a colleague at a sporting goods store who would later become his wife. From there it traces an improbable climb: a physical education degree at St Mary's University, a doctorate, and eventually, at thirty seven, an appointment as the youngest Black professor in Cambridge's history.

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