The Lost Father

The Lost Father is a novel written by American novelist Mona Simpson. It is Simpson's second novel, and is a sequel to her first, Anywhere But Here. The novel describes the protagonist's search for the father who abandoned her and her mother years before.

Like Simpson's other novels, it shares elements with her own life. Simpson's own father, Abdulfattah "John" Jandali, was, like the father in the novel, a college professor who disappeared from her life and that of her mother, Joanne Carole Schieble, when Simpson was a child. Simpson reestablished contact with him as an adult. However, in interviews, Simpson has emphasised the fictional nature of her work, with real-life elements transformed by the research and writing process.

Jandali and Schieble were also Steve Jobs' birth parents, having given him up for adoption before Simpson was born, although nothing of this appears in the novel.