Blood-Dark Track: A Family History

Blood-Dark Track: A Family History
Joseph O’Neill

A fascinating family memoir from Joseph O'Neill, author of the Man Booker Prize longlisted and Richard & Judy pick, ‘Netherland’.Joseph O'Neill's grandfathers – one Irish, one Turkish – were both imprisoned during the Second World War. The Irish grandfather, a handsome rogue from a family of small farmers, was an active member of the IRA and was interned with hundreds of his comrades. O'Neill's other grandfather, a hotelier from a tiny and threatened Turkish Christian minority, was imprisoned by the British in Palestine, on suspicion of being a spy.At the age of thirty, Joseph O'Neill set out to uncover his grandfather's stories, what emerges is a narrative of two families and two charismatic but flawed men – it is a story of murder, espionage, paranoia and fear, of memories of violence and of fierce commitments to political causes.

JOSEPH O’NEILL

Blood-Dark Track

A Family History

Copyright (#ulink_5f9e7ae5-41a8-5552-8bb8-a7a259227111)

Fourth Estate

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/)

This Harper Press edition published 2009

First published in Great Britain by Granta Books in 2000

Copyright © Joseph O’Neill 2000

Joseph O’Neill asserts the moral right to be identified

as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780007309252

Ebook Edition © JANUARY 2017 ISBN: 9780007380770

Version: 2017-01-19

Praise (#ulink_a3f21287-0dbe-5952-9c19-8ef7bad19f7e)

From the reviews of Blood-Dark Track:

‘This is a beautifully written and complicated book, in which difficult perceptions are expressed with forensic honesty’

Sunday Telegraph

‘Joseph O’Neill is a corporate lawyer, a novelist … a philosopher. The story he tells here yields much evidence of the quickness of mind, analytical skill, contemplative ability and sheer endurance that these three roles demand … He also writes beautifully … But the book’s greatest triumph is in the delicate, sympathetic peeling back of layer after layer of two families before and after they overlap’

Financial Times

‘Blood-Dark Track is a superbly composed double-narrative … an extraordinary piece of detective work, removing the veil of silence that had been drawn across a history of the two branches of his family, and of the turbulent and often violent times in which O’Neill and Dakad lived’

Esquire

‘A gripping detective story, a thoughtful enquiry into nationalism, and a moving evocation of world war at the edges of its European theatre’

The Economist

‘An extraordinary book. The progress of [O’Neill’s] investigations are imbued with all the darkening excitement of a novel by le Carré or Greene’

TLS

‘His thoroughness and energy are phenomenal’

LRB

‘He uncovers fascinating parallels between the two men, illuminating the ways in which individual lives mesh with history’

Sunday Times

‘Joseph O’Neill writes beautifully. The fascination of this book lies in watching him come to terms with the violence in his family’s past’

Daily Mail

‘A most intriguing beast, this … An unusual and fascinating book’

Evening Herald

‘In its very unease, it is a remarkable work’

Irish Times

‘Blood-Dark Track moves adroitly between Ireland and the Middle East, and interlaces O’Neill’s own quest to discover what his grandfathers were up to with fascinating and unfamiliar insights into the history of their times … the result is riveting’

Sunday Express

‘An exploration into his secretive family history … makes compulsive reading’

Tatler

‘A book of remarkable virtuosity and illumination … This wonderful account is a joy to read, not least for the chance it gives us to understand ourselves’

The Herald

‘Blood-Dark Track is full of good things’

Independent