The Last Shot

by Hugo Hamilton

In a tale that spans two generations, an American living in West Germany travels to Nuremberg, where he meets the man who fired the final--but unrecorded--shot of World War II. By the author of Surrogate City.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Historical

175 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1992

About the author

Hugo Hamilton is an Irish writer.

Hamilton's mother was a German who travelled to Ireland in 1949 for a pilgrimage, married an Irishman, and settled in the country. His father was a militant nationalist who insisted that his children should speak only German or Irish, but not English, a prohibition the young Hugo resisted inwardly. "The prohibition against English made me see that language as a challenge. Even as a child I spoke to the walls in English and secretly rehearsed dialogue I heard outside," he wrote later.

As a consequence of this, he grew up with three languages - English, Irish and German - and a sense of never really belonging to any: "There were no other children like me, no ethnic groups that I could attach myself to".

Hamilton became a journalist, and then a writer of short stories and novels. His first three novels were set in Central Europe. Then came Headbanger (1996), a darkly comic crime novel set in Dublin and featuring detective Pat Coyne. A sequel, Sad Bastard, followed in 1998.

Following a year spent in Berlin on a cultural scholarship, he completed his memoir of childhood, The Speckled People (2003), which went on to achieve widespread international acclaim. Telling the story through the eyes of his childhood self, it painfully evoked the struggle to make sense of a bizarre adult world. It "triumphantly avoids the Angela's Ashes style of sentimental nostalgia and victim claims," wrote Hermione Lee in the The Guardian . "The cumulative effect is to elevate an act of scrupulous remembering into a work of art," commented James Lasdun in the New York Times. The story is picked up in the 2006 volume, The Sailor in the Wardrobe.

In May 2007, German publisher Luchterhand published Die redselige Insel (The Talkative Island), in which Hamilton retraced the journey Heinrich Böll made in Ireland that was to be the basis of his bestselling book Irisches Tagebuch (Irish Journal) in 1957. Hamilton's most recent novel, Disguise was published on June 6, 2008.

Hugo Hamilton lives in Dublin, Ireland.

Source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Ham...

Reviews

[Dora · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rarely do I enjoy a book as much as I have enjoyed reading this one. Even though it started off as a college assignment, I got hooked after 20 pages and completely forgot that it was "obligatory". I admired how Hamilton was able to construct his characters so realistically. Their relationships were fascinating and the war theme just made the situations more ralistic, personal and touching.

[Mate77 · Rating 3 out of 5]

This novel follows two storylines, both of them set at major events in world history. Both stories are set in Germany, the first is occuring on the last days of WWII, the other just as the Berlin wall is falling down. The core of both storylines is a relationship between a man and a woman, and as the novel progresses we discover what connects the two stories.

A very well written, concise novel with very realistic characters. I had to read this as part of my post-modernism class and I didn't regret it as I usually do when I'm forced to read stuff I don't feel like reading at the moment.

[Stipe · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one caught me by surprise. It's quite good! Very fun and cleverly written World War 2 drama.

[DKM · Rating 3 out of 5]

Het boek kwam toevallig op mijn pad.
Leest makkelijk en het verhaal houdt je bezig. Waar gaat het om. Er zijn twee liefdesverhalen. Tegen het einde blijkt het verband. Waarom moest dit verhaal verteld worden.
Goede schrijfstijl.
De schrijver is een naam om te onthouden.

[Alexis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really loved this one, I just found the secondary storyline a little weaker. Still, a solid read — given that I was pretty ambivalent to Hamilton’s “Headbanger” I was fairly surprised by how much I enjoyed it.

[Marino · Rating 4 out of 5]

a wonderful parallel story in which one narrative is set during the downfall of the Third Reich, while the other is set during the fall of the Eastern Block. Hamilton's simple sentence manage to capture the intimate atmosphere of the book, that might sound so out of place, but in fact fits perfectly.

[Heleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Staat op mijn te lezen lijst omdat ik het voor 0,50 vond in Enkhuizen.
Leest makkelijk en het verhaal houdt je bezig. Waar gaat het om. Er zijn twee liefdesverhalen. Tegen het einde blijkt het verband. Waarom moest dit verhaal verteld worden. De schrijver is een naam om te onthouden.

[Rino Feys · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aangrijpend en spannend relaas van een man op zoek naar de puzzelstukken van zijn verleden. Twee ogenschijnlijk los van elkaar staande verhaallijnen raken steeds nauwer met elkaar verweven en monden uit in een ontroerende finale.

[Elizabeth Ann Cyrus · Rating 5 out of 5]

beautiful!!

[Debbie · Rating 2 out of 5]

This started out good with some interesting details. It then got a bit rushed and I felt the author ended the story rather abruptly.