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In the end days of WWII, a young German woman loses her 2-year old son in the bombings. Her father finds an orphan in the rubble, and they replace the child and resolve never to tell anyone, not even his father. But secrets have a way of coming out...
Synopsis
Hugo Hamilton, the internationally acclaimed author of 'The Speckled People' and 'Sailor in the Wardrobe', turns his hand back to fiction with a compelling drama tracing Berlin's central historical importance throughout the twentieth century.
Book Details
Publisher:
Fourth Estate
Publication Date:
23-Jul-2009
ISBN:
9780007314706
Observer review
Disguise
Michael Englard the observer Sat 25 July 2009
In the last year of the Second World War in Berlin, a young boy is taken in by a mother who has lost her son in a bombing raid. The exchange is concealed and the abandoned child is given the name and identity of the dead boy. The insinuations of a family friend lead the boy to believe he is Jewish and he runs away, gets circumcised and becomes a musician. Hugo Hamilton, an Irish novelist whose mother was German, arranges this narrative around a series of delayed and contradictory revelations. The crisp style gives cohesion to the book's complex structure, but his efficient sentences can veer towards empty platitudes: "Nothing is real in the end, not until it's reported. Nobody is real unless they have a witness for their lives."
