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Conversation with the Sea
'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
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
- GenresIrelandLiterary Fiction
197 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 28, 2025
28 people are currently reading
174 people want to read
About the author
Hugo Hamilton
38 books92 followersHugo 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...
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...
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
December 4, 2025
Conversation with the Sea by Hugo Hamilton is a beautiful and deeply reflective read. Hugo Hamilton masterfully shows how history repeats itself in different forms, and how the past keeps tugging at us no matter how far we travel. One of the best books I’ve read this year.
December 2, 2025
After reading Universality and coming out of it depressed and discouraged in the face of our current political climate this left me tentatively optimistic.
I really enjoyed most parts of it. The writing drew me in, there were a few fun references to mythologies and the main character (while somewhat annoying) was an intriguing point of view on all the well constructed and much more sympathetic side characters.
To me, this really felt like both a call for balancing a recognition of the past with actively participating in the present. However, most of all, the book talks about empathy and understanding which I think is something essential for a functioning society.
Wish he had left out the bits about boobs but oh well
I really enjoyed most parts of it. The writing drew me in, there were a few fun references to mythologies and the main character (while somewhat annoying) was an intriguing point of view on all the well constructed and much more sympathetic side characters.
To me, this really felt like both a call for balancing a recognition of the past with actively participating in the present. However, most of all, the book talks about empathy and understanding which I think is something essential for a functioning society.
Wish he had left out the bits about boobs but oh well
December 28, 2025
Beautifully written
December 4, 2025
“It's impossible to compare grief. How would you measure something like that? Grief is too big, he said. It's like trying to measure infinity.
What he wanted to say to her and could not find the right words for and later clarified in his journal, was that the absence of people you love is beyond comparison. It was impossible to equate the grief of his people with the grief of her people. It's not some kind of numbers thing.
There is no equality in suffering. Only duplication. Adding more red dots. More dead bodies. History on top of history.
Emptiness upon emptiness.”
What he wanted to say to her and could not find the right words for and later clarified in his journal, was that the absence of people you love is beyond comparison. It was impossible to equate the grief of his people with the grief of her people. It's not some kind of numbers thing.
There is no equality in suffering. Only duplication. Adding more red dots. More dead bodies. History on top of history.
Emptiness upon emptiness.”
January 19, 2026
Not my cup of tea.
October 23, 2025
It all came together at the end. It was very simplistic with great themes but no depth. Not sure it was a book I'd recommend.
February 1, 2026
Lukas, on a visit from Berlin to an island off the west coast of Ireland, following the break up of his marriage. It is the place he honeymooned twenty years previously. I suspect the location is Achill Island, it being one of the only islands that it is possible to drive onto.
Throughout the book, written in beautiful and simple language, Hamilton captures the very essence of that part of the country. He settles into a guesthouse, run by an inquisitive, but kindly landlady, and in his journal he records every little encounter and incident he comes upon on a daily basis, nothing is too trivial, as he turns it into something beautiful.
Lots of wonderful scenes. My favourite, that of an old man and his grandson when their horse escapes their custody and races into the sea. The sense of terror of both the horse and the young boy holding onto the reins as the horse drags him into the ocean was palpable. Rescued by the visiting surfers.
His description of something so simple as buying a new journal – inhaling the scent of the new paper and going back in time to the trees and the forests from which it was made, and the saw mills was something that gave him pleasure.
Not totally alone, he collects his friend Brian from hospital and through Brian and his wife Gabi he meets refugees Mira and her hostile son Omar, whose ambition is to go back to his war-torn country to fight. Something he can relate to given his inherited memory of the Holocaust.
Every little encounter is worthy of recording in his journal, seemingly bringing him a level of peace as the weeks go on. A great lesson in living in the moment.
This is a book to savour. The story is fragile, but well worth sticking with to the end, the type of book that the descriptions will haunt the reader for a long time. One of my favourite descriptions was that of the west of Ireland rain falling like net curtains over the landscape.
It is the first book I’ve read by this author and it won’t be the last. I loved it and so will fans of Niall Williams.
Throughout the book, written in beautiful and simple language, Hamilton captures the very essence of that part of the country. He settles into a guesthouse, run by an inquisitive, but kindly landlady, and in his journal he records every little encounter and incident he comes upon on a daily basis, nothing is too trivial, as he turns it into something beautiful.
Lots of wonderful scenes. My favourite, that of an old man and his grandson when their horse escapes their custody and races into the sea. The sense of terror of both the horse and the young boy holding onto the reins as the horse drags him into the ocean was palpable. Rescued by the visiting surfers.
His description of something so simple as buying a new journal – inhaling the scent of the new paper and going back in time to the trees and the forests from which it was made, and the saw mills was something that gave him pleasure.
Not totally alone, he collects his friend Brian from hospital and through Brian and his wife Gabi he meets refugees Mira and her hostile son Omar, whose ambition is to go back to his war-torn country to fight. Something he can relate to given his inherited memory of the Holocaust.
Every little encounter is worthy of recording in his journal, seemingly bringing him a level of peace as the weeks go on. A great lesson in living in the moment.
This is a book to savour. The story is fragile, but well worth sticking with to the end, the type of book that the descriptions will haunt the reader for a long time. One of my favourite descriptions was that of the west of Ireland rain falling like net curtains over the landscape.
It is the first book I’ve read by this author and it won’t be the last. I loved it and so will fans of Niall Williams.
January 4, 2026
Whilst I enjoyed this book, it won't linger long in my memory. Most of it takes place inside the protagonist's head, in a dream-like way, as he holidays in a b&b in the west of ireland, trying to get over the breakdown of his marriage. It recalled for me the story of "Peter Bergmann", a German who checked into a b&b in Sligo under a false name, and whose body was found washed up on a beach, & who has never been identified. (btw I'm not suggesting that the book follows the same path, but maybe it was inspired by it)
November 12, 2025
Strangely unsatisfying, pretty dull. I just didn’t find it engaging. The only one from the An Post list that really didn’t work for me
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews