Conversation with the Sea by Hamilton, Hugo

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Shortlisted for the 2026 Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award’I feel changed by this novel’ Donal Ryan’An epic story’ Anne Enright’Truly a book for our time’ Paul Lynch’Near-perfect beauty’ Irish TimesFROM THE AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR OF THE SPECKLED PEOPLE’Deeply moving, utterly readable, bursting with life’ Frank McGuinness’Hamilton leaves you with images that linger’ Sunday IndependentFleeing 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.

‘Unsettling and strangely absorbing’ Irish Independent’A profound meditation … precise, masterly’ Irish Examiner