![Hello, Future! [Please be kind.] Hardcover Journal](https://hachette.imgix.net/books/9781546015079.jpg?w=210&h=280&fit=crop)
Conversation with the Sea
Hugo Hamilton
Formats & Editions
'Truly a book for our time' PAUL LYNCH
FROM THE AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR OF THE SPECKLED PEOPLE
Fleeing his failed marriage in Berlin, Lukas Dorn revisits the West of Ireland, the place of his honeymoon two decades earlier. While his former wife is being cancelled at work and his daughter is arrested at a street protest, he tries to make sense of his broken life with a journal as his sole companion.
His inherited memory of the Nazi Holocaust comes face to face with the present when he meets a refugee from a recent warzone. As Lukas communes with the elements in this wild coastal place, he is forced into a confrontation with the past that will carry him to the edge of existence.
Conversation with the Sea speaks with heart-rending tenderness to the present moment, as it explores truth, illusion and the deadly silencing of war in a captivating tale of love in a time of displacement.
'Told with Hamilton's signature purity of tone, an epic story about how love and history intersect.' ANNE ENRIGHT
'I don't think I've ever read a book as wise, or as moving. I will treasure it forever.' DONAL RYAN
'Hypnotic, passionate, urgent ... Hamilton cuts a clean line to the truth of our mindless moment.' PAUL LYNCH
Read MorePraise for Conversation with the Sea
-
Hugo Hamilton is a master at evoking placelessness, and in this hypnotic, passionate and urgent novel, he cuts a clean line to the truth of our mindless moment - truly a book for our time. - Paul LynchThis novel was just waiting for Hugo Hamilton to come along and write it. Set in the west of Ireland, it is both local and displaced, folkloric and modern. Told with Hamilton's signature purity of tone, this is an epic story about how love and history intersect. - Anne EnrightA marvellous book that encompasses an entire society. Perfect in cadence, it combines superbly drawn characters and elemental drama with an innocent ease in tone. For the rest of his life, people will want to talk to Hugo about this novel. - Colm ToibinI don't think I've ever read a book as wise, or as moving. It's replete with images that I know will stay with me forever: the red dots; the motorcycling couple; the pink-jacketed U-bahn man; the flung suitcases; the women on the truck; and Lukas's almost ghostly, liminal presence in his own story, as he tries and tries to give coherence to the inchoate; to work his grief and trauma into some kind of resolution. His pain and his yearning lift up from every line, and what lines they are. This is a book of Everything: love, family, home, war, migration, loss; at once and by turns gentle and ferocious, luminous and dark, and ultimately filled with hope. I feel changed by this novel, and I will treasure it forever. - Donal Ryan
Find a book you'll love, get our newsletter
© Hachette Aotearoa | New Zealand, All Rights Reserved · Site by Chook