The Memory Chalet

by Tony Judt

About the book

The Memory Chalet by Tony Judt (2010) is a memoir written under extraordinary circumstances: the historian Judt composed it in his head while paralysed by ALS (motor neurone disease), using a “memory palace”, an imagined Swiss chalet from his childhood, to store and order the essays before dictating them. The result is a series of short, luminous autobiographical pieces on his life, the 20th century and the act of memory itself. It is both a moving personal document and a demonstration of the memory techniques it describes.