You have a funny way of doing things here.

The voice is that of Vid Cosic, a Serbian immigrant who strikes up an immediate friendship with a young Dublin lawyer, Kevin Concannon. Their friendship is overshadowed by a violent incident in which a man is left for dead in the street one night. The legal consequences force them into an ever closer partnership, drawing Vid right into the Concannon family, working for them as a carpenter on a major renovation project and becoming more and more involved in the troubled family story.

Disguise (2008) Gregor Liedmann dies at the age of three in the bombing of Berlin during World War II. As his grieving mother flees south, her father Emil picks up a refugee orphan to replace her missing son. Only much later does Gregor discover that he is, in fact, a Jewish survivor. But there is no proof, and Gregor spends a lifetime in the borderlands between real and imagined origins, running away from his family, unable to keep his own marriage, travelling around the world as a musician and ending up in Ireland, only to return to Berlin after the fall of the Wall. On a single day spent gathering fruit in an orchard outside Berlin with family and friends, Gregor looks back over his life, sifting through fact and memory in order to establish the truth. What happened on that journey south in the final days of the war? Why did his grandfather Emil disappear and why did the Gestapo torture uncle Max? Here in the calmness of the orchard, Gregor's former wife Mara and his son Daniel finally bring out the evidence. In his first novel since the best-selling memoir 'The Speckled People', Hugo Hamilton has created a truly compelling story of lost identity, a remarkable reflection on the ambiguity of home and belonging.

Die Redselige Insel (2007) 50 Jahre nach Heinrich Böll begibt sich der deutsch-irische Schriftsteller Hugo Hamilton auf die Spuren des deutschen Nobelpreisträgers und bereist die Grüne Insel, zeigt, wie vieles heute anders und wie vieles sich dennoch gleichgeblieben ist. Das braune Moor, die rosagrauen und bernsteingelben Wolken, verfallene Ruinen, brausender Wind - natürlich erzählt Hamilton auch von der irischen Landschaft, von der Magie des Torffeuers, von der irischen Freude an der Verkleidung der Wahrheit, vom Wert des Redens und Geschichtenerzählens. Und im Entdecken einer Gegenwart jenseits aller Klischees erschafft Hamilton ein vergnügliches, scharfsinniges Portrait dieser besonderen Insel.

The Sailor in the Wardrobe (2006) The young Hugo Hamilton grew up longing to find his place in the world. In a family caught in the past, confined by his Irish father's anger, confused by his German mother's feelings after the Second World War, Hugo might have hoped that his job at the local harbour would provide respite. Though it brings friendship and adventure, it entangles him further in the conflict as he witnesses the simmering feud between two fischermen - one Catholic, one Protestant, mirroring the spiralling troubles in the North. He also waits for news of his cousin, who has mysteriously disappeared on the Irish West coast. How will he leave this life of blame behind him?

The Speckled People (2003) As a young boy, growing up in Dublin, Hugo Hamilton struggles with the question of what it means to be speckled. The speckled people are, in his father's words, "the new Irish, partly from Ireland, partly from somewhere else". His father, a fierce nationalist, demands that his children speak Irish. His mother, a soft-spoken woman marked by her family's refusal to accept Nazi anti-Semitism, talks to her children in the language of her homeland, Germany. Hugo wants to speak English. English is, after all, what all the other children in Dublin speak. English is what they use when they hunt him down in the streets and call him "Eichmann", as they bring him to trial and sentence him to death at a mock seaside court. Surrounded by fear, guilt, and frequently comic cultural entangle-ments, Hugo tries to understand the differences between Irish history and German history and to turn the strange logic of what he is told into truth. It is a journey that ends in liberation but not before the long-buried secrets at the back of the parent's wardrobe have been laid bare.

Sad Bastard (1998) Dublin policeman Pat Coyne was the eponymous Headbanger of Hugo Hamilton's last novel. He is now the Sad Bastard of this one. The fiercely moral and frighteningly confused Coyne was dubbed "the Irish Dirty Harry" as he took on the lowlife of Dublin's underworld. But now, after five months on sick leave following a fire, he is reduced to sitting alone at a bar ordering gin and tonics on the off chance that his estranged wife might walk in and rescue him. Battalions of psychologists and healers are set to work on his troubled psyche, but "put it this way", muses the narrator: "It was a waste of time trying to bring Coyne back to normal. He had never been normal in the first place, and was hardly going to fit into the parameters of textbook sanity at this point." So in the absence of reflective calm, he again chooses chaotic action and plunges into the uncertainties and dangers of modern Ireland. The lively plot involves Coyne's son in some dangerous dock-side shenanigans and a scam to bring into the country illegal immigrants from Romania. But the real subject is Ireland, and the rapid process of changes it is undergoing, which leaves Coyne, as ever, to ruminate sadly that "maybe Ireland was not a real place but a country that existed only in the imagination, or in the songs of emigrants."

Headbanger (1996) Coyne still carried with him the rather sad summer image of an upturned ice-cream cone with a white pool spreading out along the pavement, and a crow with tattered charcoal wings tilting his beak to drink from some child's misfortune. To Coyne it was a symbol for all the invisible tragedy that lurked underneath society. He was there to make sure that the enemies of happiness were banished. Somebody had to deal with all the brutality and misery. And Coyne was going to kick ass, as they kept saying on TV. He was going to sort out some of these bastards. Blow them away. The Dublin Dirty Harry.

The Love Test (1995) Matthias, a Berlin journalist, becomes involved with a former East German prisoner, Christa, whose child was taken from her in a forced adoption. The story is seen from two perspectives: on the one hand, the derelict relationship between Matthias and his wife Claudia; on the other, the emerging story of Christa and Ralf, and their passionate affair during the days of the GDR regime.

The Last Shot (1991) Stationed in a small, Bohemian town somewhere between Prague and Dresden in the final days of the Second World War, Officer Franz Kern and Bertha Sommer long for escape. But the road to freedom is fraught with danger. If they are caught deserting their own side they will be executed,; if they stay, their lives will be worthlittle in the hands of the Red Army soldiers that advance on them daily. Decades later, a young American living in Germany sets out on a self-appointed mission. His task is to discover the location of the last shot fired in the war. As he delves deeper and deeper into the past, he finds himself being drawn into the story of Bertha and Franz's daring escape, and the surprising discoveries that follow.

Surrogate City (1990) When Alan first meets Helen in a Berlin bar, he cannot be expected to know her story. When he offers to help, no one could predict the outcome, not even Hadja - young, German and powerful - as she takes on the role of world police, directing operations in a world of exploitation and reverse manipulation.