The Speckled People: A Memoir Of A Half-Irish Childhood [Paperback]

We wear Aran Sweaters and Lederhosen. We are forbidden from speaking English. We are trapped in a language war. We are the Speckled People. In one of the most original memoirs to emerge in years, Hugo Hamilton tells the haunting story of his German-Irish childhood in 1950s Dublin. His Gaelic-speaking, Irish nationalist father rules the home with tyranny, while his German-speaking mother rescues her children with cakes and stories of her own struggle against Nazi Germany. Out on the streets of Dublin is another country, where they are taunted as Nazis and subjected to a mock Nuremberg trial. Through the eyes of a child, this rare and shockingly honest book gradually makes sense of family, language, and identity, unlocking at last the secrets that his parents kept in the wardrobe.

An astonishing achievement...a landmark in Irish nonfiction&a masterpiece.A fine reminder that there are many ways of being Irish.Hamiltons most successful book to date, after building up a fine reputation as a novelist.Unlike most Irish memoirs, this one is devoid of sentimentality. Which doesnt make it any the less heartrending. A complex and layered story, intriguingly different from all those other Irish-childhood memoirs.Never clich?d, thanks largely to Hamiltons frankly poetic language and masterful portait of childhood&a beautiful memoir.An astonishing account, both delicate and strong, of great issues of twentieth-century Europe, modern Ireland, and family everywhere.A wonderful, subtle, problematic and humane book....about Ireland...about a particular family...about alternatives and complexities anywhere.Evocative, agitating and inspiriting, Speckled People sticks up for diversity and principled dissent...extending the scope of Irish memoir.A memoir of childhood that often reads like a craftily composed work of fiction.The most gripping book Ive read in ages...a fascinating, disturbing and often very funny memoir.A prizedelicate, achingly well-obsl-