Blood-Dark Track

Acclaim for Joseph O’Neill’s
Blood-Dark Track

“An extraordinary book.… As thrilling as a murder trial.… The progress of [O’Neill’s] investigations are imbued with all the darkening excitement of a novel by le Carré or Greene.”

—
The Times Literary Supplement
(London)

“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

“Joseph O’Neill’s voice in this book is often intimate and engaging, like someone whispering fascinating secrets, but it is also at times a public voice, deeply involved with the silences and lies which have surrounded the past and distorted the present in both Turkey and Ireland. O’Neill is a born storyteller with a sharp eye, a great style, and a good wit. His sense of modern Ireland, with all its ghosts and contradictions, is superb.”

—Colm Tóibín

“A stealthy, evidential enterprise, it stalks its material, considers, reassesses and chews over the theories. It is a big cat of a book. It creeps up on you, then pounces. And once it has you in its grip, it doesn’t let go in a hurry.”

—
Evening Standard
(London)

“Every word in this riveting book is carefully freighted. Unlike many books which claim to trace a ‘journey,’
Blood-Dark Track
achieves its ambition, leaving teller and listener at the end with a haunting sense of having arrived somewhere new.”

—
The Times
(London)

“Painfully honest and lucid.… 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
(London)

“The book has certainly worked hard to earn the reconciliation it finally imagines. It is too honest to get what it hopes for; too uncertain to know for sure what it is that has to be reconciled or forgiven. In its very unease, it is a remarkable book.”

—
The Irish Times

“The story [O’Neill] tells here yields much evidence of [his] quickness of mind, analytical skill, contemplative ability and sheer endurance. But the book’s greatest triumph is the delicate, sympathetic peeling back of layer after layer of two families before and after they overlap.”

—
The Observer
(London)

“This is a beautifully written and complicated book, in which difficult perceptions are expressed with forensic honesty. Its author finds that he cannot quite define his elusive grandfathers, and their moralities; but he has certainly come closer to defining himself, and his.”

—
The Sunday Telegraph
(London)

“The premise for this book is a simple and utterly compelling one; a commonality that brings two heterogenous places and cultures and lives together. The fruit of those parallel journeys is a remarkable book, almost novelistic in form and in style. [O’Neill] is a born writer … with a gorgeous sense of history and emotion and timbre.”

—
Sunday Tribune
(Ireland)

“[O’Neill’s] thoroughness and energy are phenomenal.”

—
London Review of Books

“[O’Neill] uncovers fascinating parallels between the two men, illuminating the ways in which individual lives mesh with history.”

—
The Sunday Times
(London)

“A moving account, judiciously mixing familial feelings with historical research to powerful effect.”

—
New Statesman

Joseph O’Neill
Blood-Dark Track

Joseph O’Neill was born in Cork, Ireland, in 1964 and grew up in Mozambique, South Africa, Iran, Turkey, and Holland. His works include the novels
Netherland
, which won the PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction and the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award,
This Is the Life
, and
The Breezes
. He writes regularly for
The Atlantic Monthly
. He lives with his family in New York City.

ALSO BY JOSEPH O’NEILL

Netherland
This Is the Life
The Breezes

FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, OCTOBER 2010

Copyright © 2001 by Joseph O’Neill

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in Great Britain by Granta Books, London, in 2001.

Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and The Wylie Agency LLC
: Excerpt from “Cities & Memory” from
Invisible Cities
by Italo Calvino, translated by by William Weaver, copyright © 1972 by Giulio Einaudi Editore s.p.a., English translation copyright © 1974 by Harcourt, Inc. Originally
Le citta invisibili
by Italo Calvino, copyright © 1972 by Italo Calvino. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company and electronically and in print outside the US by permission of The Wylie Agency LLC.
Alfred A. Knopf:
Excerpt from THE REBEL by Albert Camus, translated by Anthony Bower, translation copyright © 1956 by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.; excerpt from LETTERS OF THOMAS MANN, 1889–1955, by Thomas Mann, translated by Richard & Clara Winston, copyright © 1970 by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. Reprinted courtesy of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.
Penguin Classics:
Excerpt from THE HOUSE OF THE DEAD by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, translated with an introduction by David McDuff (Penguin Classics, 1985), copyright © 1985 by David McDuff. Excerpt from ESSAYS AND APHORISMS by Arthur Schopenhauer, selected and translated with an introduction by R. J. Hollingdale (Penguin Classics, 1970), translation and introduction copyright © 1970 by R. J. Hollingdale. Reprinted courtesy of Penguin Group UK, London, on behalf of Penguin Classics.
Roberts Rinehart Publishers and Mercier Press:
Excerpt from GUERILLA DAYS IN IRELAND by Tom Barry (1949). Reprinted courtesy of Roberts Rinehart Publishers, an imprint of Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group and Mercier Press, County Cork, Ireland.
Scribner:
Five lines from “Hound Voice” by W. B. Yeats from THE COLLECTED WORKS OF W. B. YEATS, VOLUME I: THE POEMS, REVISED, edited by Richard J. Finneran, copyright © 1940 by Georgie Yeats, copyright renewed 1968 by Bertha Georgie Yeats, Michael Butler Yeats and Anne Yeats. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Scribner, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Syracuse University Press:
Excerpt from AN ONLY CHILD by Frank O’Connor (Syracuse University Press, 1997). Reprinted courtesy of Syracuse University Press.
Verso:
Excerpt from MINIMA MORALIA: REFLECTIONS ON A DAMAGED LIFE by Theodor Adorno, translated by E. F. N. Jephcott (Verso, London, 2005). Reprinted courtesy of Verso.

The Cataloging-in-Publication data is available on file at the Library of Congress.

eISBN: 978-0-307-74265-0

www.vintagebooks.com

v3.1

To the memory of Joseph Dakad (1899–1964) and
James O’Neill (1909–1973); to my sons; and to Sally
.

Contents

Cover

About the Author

Other Books by this Author

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Epigraph

Preface to the Vintage Edition

Map

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

This book is largely the product of help I have received from my family, Turkish and Irish. As regards the latter, I am grateful, first and foremost, to my grandmother, Eileen O’Neill, who freely lent herself to a project that, by its nature, was troubling to her. I owe a similar debt of gratitude to Jim O’Neill, Terry O’Neill, Ann Pollock-O’Neill and Marian O’Sullivan-O’Neill, who shared thoughtful and sensitive insights into the character and life of my Irish grandfather, Jim O’Neill. My greatest debt, here, is to Brendan O’Neill. His generosity of spirit and willingness to reflect openly on sensitive historical issues made a huge contribution to this book. I also wish to thank, in relation to the Irish story, Acushla Bastible, Pat Buckley, Con and Oriana Conner, Dan Daly, Antony Farrell, Mick Fitzgibbon, Derry and Phyllis Kelleher, Paddy Lynch, Peig Lynch, Frank and Mary Morris, Barney McFadden, Angela McEvoy-O’Neill, Shammy O’Connell, Pat O’Neill, Seán O’Neill, Mary O’Sullivan, Billy Pollock, Mrs Salter-Townshend, Brendan Sealy, Christopher Somerville. John Bowyer Bell was an essential source of information about the shooting of Admiral Somerville and pre-Emergency republicanism generally. My heavy
reliance on the work of Peter Hart and Uinseann MacEoin will be evident to readers.

Amy Dakad’s translation of Joseph Dakad’s testimony is the foundation of my inquiry into my Turkish grandfather’s life, and I am enormously appreciative of her work. I am deeply grateful for the scholarship and friendly help of Sir Denis Wright, whose influence on this book has been vital. I also wish to thank, in relation to the Turkish story, Florent Arnaud, Sara Bershtel, Ginette Estève, Patrick Grigsby, the late Professor O.R. Gurney, Brother Guy of Latrun, the late Bill Henderson, Haidar Husseini, the Kurdish Human Rights Project, Tim Ottey, Denis Ryan, Tom Segev, Astrid Seime, Yitzhak Shamir, Yves-Marie Villedieu, the late Lolo Zahlout. I wish to acknowledge the contribution of my late great-aunts, Alexandra and Isabelle Nader, and grandmother, Georgette Dakad.

A variety of institutions enabled my research, in particular the Middle East Centre at St Antony’s College, Oxford; the New York Public Library; the British Library. While I wrote the book, my unlucrative presence was tolerated by the staff and proprietors of La Bergamote (thank you, Romain Lamaze); the Malibu Diner; and the Riss Restaurant. Bob and Nan Stewart were wonderfully hospitable to me in Ontario, Canada.

The following helped me in various ways: Shari Anlauf, Tom Astor, Pete Ayrton, Matthew Batstone, David Bieda, Daniel Bobker, Susie Boyt, Philippe Carré, Monique El-Faizy, Jean Fermin, Vanessa Friedman, Michael Gorchov, Adam Green, Philip Horne, Philip Hughes, Nico Israel, Damian Lanigan, Darian Leader, Simon Page, Oliver Phillips, Michael Rips, Colin Robinson, Leon Klugman and the Singer family, Grub Smith, David Stewart, Philip Warnett, Arnold Weinstein, Jos Williams. Ann, David and Elizabeth O’Neill have been a great help to me, and I am deeply indebted to the chambers of Mark Strachan Q.C. for its good-humoured assent to my lengthy sabbaticals. I wish to thank Neil Belton for his important editorial contribution, Rea Hederman for publishing this book in the United States, and Gill Coleridge for her steadfast encouragement and guidance over many years. My
parents, Kevin O’Neill and Caroline O’Neill-Dakad, have, more than ever, been a vital source of encouragement, inspiration and advice; and so, too, my wife, Sally Singer. This book was her idea.

Some day we shall get up before the dawn
And find our ancient hounds before the door,
And wide awake know that the hunt is on;
Stumbling upon the blood-dark track once more,
That stumbling to the kill beside the shore