The idea that a book could tell its own story came to Hugo Hamilton when a relative handed him a copy of Joseph Roth’s novel Rebellion, which tells the story of a soldier turned street musician between the World Wars. The novel had been saved from the Nazi book burnings of the 1930s. “I held the book in my hand, and I thought of all the thumbprints, dead and alive, contained in that novel,” says the Irish-German writer, who turns 69 tomorrow.
The narrator of Hamilton’s new novel, The Pages, is a 1924 edition of Rebellion that tells the story of its own life since a professor rescued it from destruction in 1933. The Pages begins in the present day: “Here I am, stored inside a piece of hand language, being carried through the departure lounge at JFK airport.”
