Blood-Dark Track

A fascinating family memoir from Joseph O'Neill. '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.