品牌：
基本信息
·出版社：Fourth Estate
·页码：304 页码
·出版日：2003年
·ISBN：0007149980
·条码：9780007149988
·版次：1
·装帧：精装
·开本：20开 20开
内容简介
Book Description
As a young boy, growing up in Dublin, Hugo Hamilton struggles with the question of what it means to be speckled. The speckled people are, in his father's words, "the new Irish, partly from Ireland, partly from somewhere else." His father, a fierce nationalist, demands that his children speak Irish. His mother, a soft-spoken woman marked by her family's refusal to accept Nazi anti-Semitism, talks to her children in the language of her homeland, Germany. Hugo wants to speak English. English is, after all, what all the other children in Dublin speak. English is what they use when they hunt him down in the streets and call him "Eichmann," as they bring him to trial and sentence him to death at a mock seaside court.
Surrounded by fear, guilt, and frequently comic cultural entanglements, Hugo tries to understand the differences between Irish history and German history and to turn the strange logic of what he is told into truth. It is a journey that ends in liberation but not before the long-buried secrets at the back of the parents' wardrobe have been laid bare.
In one of the finest books to have emerged from Ireland in many years, the acclaimed novelist Hugo Hamilton has finally written his own story — a deeply moving memoir about a family's homesickness for a country they can call their own.
Synopsis:
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.
Amazon.com
The son of a German mother and an Irish father, Hugo Hamilton grew up in Dublin in the 1950s wearing "lederhosen and Aran sweaters, smelling of rough wool and new leather, Irish on top and German below." His family spoke both German and Irish, but English was strictly forbidden--even uttering a few words of the cursed language was enough to earn an often brutal punishment from their father, a staunch Irish nationalist. His father maintained that "your home is your language" and insisted that they be a model Irish family and an example for others to follow. Hamilton and his siblings were not even permitted to play with children who did not speak Irish exclusively--a particular problem in a country where English is the primary language. Ironically, he was taunted mercilessly for his German heritage and children jeered him with cries of "Eichmann" and "Heil Hitler." He was even put on "trial" once by a gang of kids who sentenced him death by snowball firing squad. This confusing quest to discover his identity and to gain an understanding of his family history is at the heart of The Speckled People, a profoundly touching and beautifully written memoir.
His parents' secrecy concerning their own pasts only exacerbated his frustration, forcing Hamilton to cling to fragments of information gleaned secretly from hidden photographs and buried family relics. Written from the perspective of a child, Hamilton captures his feelings of confusion, guilt, and fear convincingly and with much humor and insight. Full of poetic passages, sharp observations, and the kind of subtle epiphanies that are best expressed by a child, the book is a joy to read. "When you're small you know nothing and when you grow up there are things you don't want to know," he writes. This memoir is Hamilton's attempt to reconcile the two.
--Shawn Carkonen
Amazon.co.uk Review
Why is it that Irish childhoods are somehow more interesting than any other? The Speckled People is yet another tale of rough and tumble childhood in Ireland in the 1950s. Instead of the hard-drinking, lovable father and weak abandoned mother of Frank McCourt's boyhood we're given the odd mix of an Irish nationalist father married to a German immigrant with a Nazi past. The premise seems to be rich and wide, but the whole book turns out to be rather intimate and personal. This is less a comment on Ireland and Germany after the war and more Hugo Hamilton's youthful journey of self discovery.
Hamilton writes in a style that can best be called "Irish immediate". Everything happens in the first person with a sudden awareness and blunt description. This style is charming at first, but wearing with time. Nevertheless, the narrator's exploration of his secret past, his comic boyhood adventures and conflicts captivate the reader, and one is carried away by the story. The interplay between the fierce Irish nationalism and the German identity of the narrator's mother is interesting, but they are only the outward sign of an inward discovery as the narrator strives to understand himself. As in any cross-cultural clash, the conflict ends in a fresh synthesis. So Hugo discovers his own identity and realises that he does not have to be either German or Irish, but a unique blend of both.
--Dwight Longenecker
FromPublishers Weekly
"I know what it's like to lose, because I'm Irish and I'm German," explains Hamilton in this beautiful memoir of a mixed childhood in the years after WWII. Hamilton's father says they are speckled, breac in Gaelic: spotted like a trout. With an Irish father and a German mother, Hamilton comes to Ireland as a boy in the 1950s and finds a homeland that will never fully accept him. Other children call him "Kraut" and "Nazi" and taunt him with "Sieg Heil!" salutes. Yet Hamilton is in many ways more Irish than they. His father never allows him to speak English and insists the family use the Gaelic form of their last name (O hUrmoltaigh), which many of their neighbors can't even pronounce. Despite these efforts, Hamilton knows, "we'll never be Irish enough." There is much in this Irish memoir that's familiar to the genre: the dark, overwhelming father; the tragic mother; the odd mix of patriotism and self-loathing ("the hunger strike and Irish coffee" are the country's greatest inventions, Hamilton's father says). But the book is never cliched, thanks largely to Hamilton's frankly poetic language and masterful portrait of childhood. This is really a book about how children see the world: the silent otherworld at the bottom of a swimming pool, the terror of a swarm of bees, the strangeness of a city transformed by snow. By turns lyrical and elegiac, this memoir is an absorbing record of a unique childhood and a vanishing heritage.
FromBooklist
As his father made quite clear to him, Hamilton was a "speckled person," someone partly from Ireland and partly from somewhere else. His defiantly Irish nationalist father insisted that Irish be spoken in the home. His native German mother, however, spoke German, and Hugo wanted to speak only the English of Dublin's streets and to be like everyone else. It wasn't easy, not when the neighborhood kids called him "Eichmann" and his older brother "Hitler." Rather than an account of his growing up and getting along in the world after leaving the family nest, his memoir depicts moments in his life as a troubled youngster who didn't know precisely who he was or where he belonged, and also how parents can damage their children despite the best of intentions, can devastate their notions of culture, language, and identity. Fortunately, by the end of the book, the youthful Hamilton has learned to be at peace with himself.
June Sawyers
About Author
Hugo Hamilton was born in 1953. He has published five novels and a collection of short stories. He lives in Dublin and has recently spent a year in Berlin as a writer-in-residence.
Book Dimension:
length: (cm)21.6 width:(cm)14.8
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