Hugo Hamilton's book "The Speckled People: A Memoir" is an aoto biography by novelist Hugo Hamilton about his childhood in Dublin. "Speckled People" was a phrase used by Hugo's father to describe people who are, in his father's words, "the new Irish, partly from Ireland, partly from somewhere else." Ireland, never mind Dublin, is full of speckled people as many of us discover when we search for our ancestors.
I quote a few lines from the synopsis . .. The childhood world of Hugo Hamilton is a confused place: His father, a brutal Irish nationalist, demands his children speak Gaelic at home whilst his mother, a softly spoken German emigrant who escaped Nazi Germany at the beginning of the war, encourages them to speak German. All Hugo wants to do is speak English. English is, after all, what the other children in Dublin speak.
