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From the bestselling and PEN/Faulkner Award-winning author of Netherland, a fascinating, personal, and beautifully crafted family history.
Joseph O'Neill's grandfathers--one Turkish, one Irish--were both imprisoned for suspected subversion during the Second World War. The Irish grandfather, a handsome rogue from a family of small farmers, was an active member of the IRA. O'Neill's other grandfather, a debonair hotelier from the tiny and threatened Turkish Christian minority, was interned by the British in Palestine on suspicion of being an Axis spy.
With intellect, compassion, and grace, O'Neill sets the stories of these individuals against the history of the last century's most inhuman events.
- Sales Rank: #1132034 in eBooks
- Published on: 2010-10-05
- Released on: 2010-10-05
- Format: Kindle eBook
From Publishers Weekly
The son of a Turkish mother and an Irish father, lawyer and novelist O'Neill was born in Ireland, raised in the Hague, spent summers in his mother's hometown on the Mediterranean and studied in Britain. When he was 10 or 11, in the mid-1970s, he learned that both of his late grandfathers were imprisoned during WWII. Twenty years later, he took it upon himself to learn why. The quest to determine whether his IRA-soldier grandfather was a murderer and his Turkish grandfather, a hotelier, was an Axis spy took him from County Cork to the coast of Turkey, and deep into the "dream-bright horrors" of history. O'Neill's Irish grandfather, jailed for five years for IRA activities, shared an internment camp with Nazi and Allied POWs held there "in accordance with Ireland's neutrality policy." At the same time, his Turkish grandfather suffered psychological abuse and extreme paranoia in various British and Free French military prisons filled with Lebanese, Turkish and Syrian " `suspects and known pro-Axis sympathizers.' " During his research, O'Neill collected facts about everything from the poison used to eliminate the fungus that destroyed the Irish potato crop in the late 1840s to ethnic divisions among Armenians, Muslims and non-Muslim Turks in pre-WWII Turkey. Anyone interested in the Middle East, Ireland or WWII will find this account fascinating. Readers looking for tension, family drama and pathos, however, may be frustrated with the undifferentiated details and narrative detours that sometimes encumber this story of a grandson trying to connect with the grandfathers he never knew. Photos, 2 maps.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
O'Neill, a novelist (The Breezes) and lawyer, writes a compelling family history interwoven with the politics of World War II. O'Neill sought the reasons for the internment of his Turkish and Irish grandfathers during the war, Jim O'Neill in an infamous camp in Ireland, Joseph Dadak by Britain in Palestine. He easily finds his Irish grandfather's IRA history. His Turkish grandfather seems a genuine victim until O'Neill digs deep and, like the British, suspects him of espionage. This is a voyage of self-exploration, a grandson coming to terms with family history previously forbidden. While the reader may not find the denouement as gratifying as did the author, the journey is worth the price. O'Neill's adventures in genealogy and the interviews he pursued keep the reader drawn close. Useful for academic libraries and recommended for public libraries, especially those with Middle East concentrations. Robert Moore, Framingham, MA
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Both O’Neill’s grandfathers, one Turkish Christian, one Irish Catholic, were imprisoned by the British during World War II. What had they done wrong? In researching their stories, O’Neill discovers secrets, personal and political, and his gripping family memoir also reveals a seldom-told bloody history. All the detail gets confusing at times as the author visits the prisons and delves into letters, newspaper reports, official documents, and family stories. But the muddle and mystery of spies and counterspies are part of the authentic narrative. O’Neill’s father’s father, James O’Neill, joined the IRA. Was he complicit with Nazi Germany? Or was he an informer for the British? Were they planting information on him? The maternal grandfather, Joseph Dakak, was arrested on a business trip to Palestine and spent more than three years in prison there. Does a just war justify undeserved personal suffering? Was Dakak paranoid to think his fellow prisoners were informers? The political issues are sure to spark intense debate, but more than that, it is the “miserable small story” of individual lives that holds the reader. --Hazel Rochman
Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Too long; foundation doesn't support ending
By D. C. Carrad
I loved many, many parts of this book. It is extremely well-written and thoughtful and interesting to a fault (kept me up late some nights) and I would have given it five stars at the halfway mark. However, it is simply 25 to 30% too long and would have benefited greatly from some judicious editing, particularly toward the end of the book. This is not just a complaint about length -- the political musings become ramblings and then become pedantic meanderings toward the end and all the great philosophical "at last I have found the meaning of life" screeds get tiresome very quickly. Author takes what are really coincidences about the lives of two of his two grandfathers and tries to read too much meaning to them. I would still enthusiastically recommend that you buy and read this book, just start skimming in the back half when he gets too tendentious, and you will enjoy it greatly.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Details, Details, Details
By jean chases
This is not a book that you would stumble across. I picked it up because I loved "Netherland" by the same author. And, I found the same attention to detail in this book that I was so attracted to in "Netherland".
O'Neill is a great writer with an almost unbelievable command of English. In this book, he tries to " find himself" through finding his grandfathers, one Irish, one Turkish/Syrian. What a combination! The action takes place mostly during the Second World War in Ireland and Turkey, although we get a good lesson in history before that time--- not didactic, just interesting.
Ostensibly, O'Neill wants to know how both men came to be incarcerated during the war. As criminals! Were they spies? Yes and No.
We get wonderful, unique descriptions of the countryside. Wonderful descriptions of the men and their families. And, we get philosophy. We do not get a hagiographic viewpoint. This, in itself, is a feat in a work like this.
Enjoy O'Neill's writing; you'll find it worth your time.
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful.
Brilliant tale of darkness and historical "truth"
By Mick Gold
This is a brilliant book. The author searches for the reasons why his two grandfathers - one Irish, one Turkish - both ended up in prison during the Second World War. His Turkish grandfather, Joseph Dakad, was interned by the British in Palestine on suspicion of spying for the Germans. His Irish grandfather, Jim O'Neill, was interned by his own government in the Curragh as a member of the IRA. By subtly intercutting the two stories, the book looks at nationalism in two very different contexts - the polyglot post-Ottoman culture of Turkey in the years between the two world wars, and the hidden story of Irish republicanism between De Valera coming to power and the resumption of The Troubles in 1966. In searching for the reasons why these two very different men were interned, O'Neill illuminates the unspoken ideas of nationalism and individuality that permeate (like DNA)the two sides of his family. While he sifts through British intelligence reports on "undesirable" activity in Jerusalem, and discovers who really murdered Admiral Somerville in West Cork in 1936, O'Neill's book is shot through with contemporary echoes of his grandfathers' ordeals. As the author watches Bernadette Sands reject the Good Friday Agreement in the name of Ireland's republican martyrs, and questions Yitzhak Shamir about the morality of political assassination, we realise that the ghosts of these men still haunt today's headlines, and our ancestors can assume the power of an unconscious force over our political reflexes.
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