In post-war Derry, a young boy grows up in a house heavy with silence.
From the 1940s through the early years of the Troubles, Reading in the Dark follows a child who senses that something terrible has happened long before he understands what it is. In whispered arguments, unfinished stories and the grief that grips his mother, he begins to glimpse the truth about his uncle's death and the betrayal that shaped his family.
While poverty, sectarian fear and political violence press in on the narrow streets of his neighbourhood, the deepest wound lies within his own home.
Set in Northern Ireland across decades of unrest, Reading in the Dark is historical fiction rooted in intimate loss.
Autorentext
Seamus Deane
Klappentext
This is the story of a haunted Irish childhood.
The setting is Derry in the Northern Ireland of the 40s and 50s, fraught with political hatred, family secrets and lethal intrigue. As a young boy tries to make sense of life, poverty and violence shift and obscure the facts; meanwhile his night-time reading of Irish legends weaves enchantment through reality. Claustrophobic but lyrically charged, breathtakingly sad but vibrant and unforgettable, this is one of the finest books about growing up - in Ireland or anywhere - that has ever been written.
See also: The Green Road by Anne Enright