A Quiet Search For Meaning By The Sea
Hugo Hamilton follows a man retreating to the west of Ireland as the rest of his life begins to fracture. Family strain, political unrest and inward reflection combine in a thoughtful, atmospheric novel for readers drawn to introspective fiction with emotional depth and a powerful sense of place.
Currently Out Of Stock
Conversation With The Sea
Collect 57 Reward Points
- Currently Out Of Stock
A Quiet Search For Meaning By The Sea
Hugo Hamilton follows a man retreating to the west of Ireland as the rest of his life begins to fracture. Family strain, political unrest and inward reflection combine in a thoughtful, atmospheric novel for readers drawn to introspective fiction with emotional depth and a powerful sense of place.
- Book Synopsis
-
Ideal for readers who:
- Enjoy literary fiction shaped by memory and emotional reckoning
- Are drawn to stories of crisis, reflection and the search for meaning
- Want fiction that moves between Berlin and the west of Ireland
- Like quiet, thoughtful novels with atmosphere and depth
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 faces cancellation at work and his daughter is arrested at a street protest, Lukas seeks meaning in his broken life, with only his journal as a companion.
His inherited memory of the Nazi Holocaust confronts 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 reckoning with the past—one that brings him to the edge of existence.
Conversation with the Sea speaks with heart-rending tenderness to our present moment. It explores truth, illusion, and the deadly silencing of war in a captivating tale of love in a time of displacement.
Reviews
"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 Lynch
"I 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 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
"This 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 Enright
"Hugo Hamilton has written a magnificent book. Conversation with the Sea is as compulsive as it is lyrical—deeply moving, utterly readable, bursting with life. The plot is devious and seductive; the prose takes your breath away—it towers over contemporary fiction. A triumph."
Frank McGuinness
- About The Author
- Hugo Hamilton is the best-selling author of The Speckled People, a memoir of his German-Irish childhood in Dublin, growing up with his German mother and prohibited by his revolutionary Irish father from speaking English. It was translated into twenty languages and adapted for stage at the Gate Theatre. He has published ten novels including Dublin Palms and The Pages, a collection of short stories, and a second memoir The Sailor in the Wardrobe. His stories have appeared in the New Yorker. He has won numerous literary awards for his work including the Prix Femina in France and the Bundesverdienstkreuz order of merit, awarded by the German state for his exploration of cultural diversity. Hamilton is a member of Aosdána and lives in Dublin.
- Product Details
-
- ISBN
- 9781399752107
- Format
- Paperback
- Publisher
- Hachette Books Ireland, (28 August 2025)
- Number of Pages
- 272
- Weight
- 335 grams
- Language
- English
- Dimensions
- 230 x 152 x 24 mm
- Categories: