The Speckled People: Memoir of a Half-Irish Childhood - Couverture rigide

“An astonishing achievement...a landmark in Irish nonfiction...a masterpiece.” (Washington Post)

“A fine reminder that there are many ways of being Irish.” (New York Newsday)

“Hamilton’s most successful book to date, after building up a fine reputation as a novelist.” (Irish Voice)

“Unlike most Irish memoirs, this one is devoid of sentimentality. Which doesn’t make it any the less heartrending. ” (Philadelphia Inquirer)

“A complex and layered story, intriguingly different from all those other Irish-childhood memoirs.” (Orlando Sentinel)

“Never clichéd, thanks largely to Hamilton’s frankly poetic language and masterful portait of childhood...a beautiful memoir.” (Publishers Weekly)

“An astonishing account, both delicate and strong, of great issues of twentieth-century Europe, modern Ireland, and family everywhere.” (Nuala O'Faolain)

“A wonderful, subtle, problematic and humane book....about Ireland...about a particular family...about alternatives and complexities anywhere.” (Irish Times)

“Evocative, agitating and inspiriting, Speckled People sticks up for diversity and principled dissent...extending the scope of Irish memoir.” (Independent)

“A memoir of childhood that often reads like a craftily composed work of fiction.” (Daily Telegraph (London))

The childhood world of Hugo Hamilton is a confused place: His father, a brutal Irish nationalist, demands his children speak Gaelic at home whilst his mother, a softly spoken German emigrant who escaped Nazi Germany at the beginning of the war, encourages them to speak German. All Hugo wants to do is speak English. English is, after all, what the other children in Dublin speak. English is what they use when they hunt down Hugo (or 'Eichmann' as they dub him) in the streets of Dublin, and English is what they use when they bring him to trial and execute him at a mock seaside court. Out of this fear and confusion Hugo tries to build a balanced view of the world, to turn the twisted logic of what he is told into truth. It is a journey that ends in liberation but not before this little boy has uncovered the dark and long-buried secrets that lie at the bottom of his parents' wardrobe.In one of the finest books to have emerged from Ireland since Patrick McCabe's THE BUTCHER BOY and Seamus Deane's READING IN THE DARK, acclaimed novelist Hugo Hamilton has finally written his own story.