Seamus Deane Reading in the Dark

In post-war Derry, a young boy grows up in a house heavy with silence. From the 1940s through the early years of the Troubles, Reading in the Dark follows a child who senses that something terrible has happened long before he understands what it is. In whispered arguments, unfinished stories and the grief that grips his mother, he begins to glimpse the truth about his uncle’s death and the betrayal that shaped his family. While poverty, sectarian fear and political violence press in on the narrow streets of his neighbourhood, the deepest wound lies within his own home. Set in Northern Ireland across decades of unrest, Reading in the Dark is historical fiction rooted in intimate loss.