In this edition of HoCoPoLitSo's The Writing Life, poet and musician Terence Winch interviews polyglot Hugo Hamilton, a novelist and memoirist. Hamilton grew up in Ireland, in a home that was a linguistic battlefield, speaking German and Irish, forbidden by his father to speak English. "For us as children, we grew up in this isolated little republic he's set up, and we open the door and go out into the street and there's a completely different language," Hamilton explains. He reads from his bestselling book about his childhood, The Speckled People (2003). It describes the bullying he received from his classmates, the fighting within his home, and the unexpected humor his mother brought to their lives. "I always tried to run from it. I had to become a writer to try to explain myself," Hamilton says.
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