
北アイルランド ベルファスト出身の小説家 ブライアン・ムーア(1921-1999)著の1965年出版の小説です。
ムーアの著書Lies of Silence は 邦題 沈黙のベルファスト として訳され、ハヤカワ文庫から出版されています。
購入後、読まずに放置していたので、きれいな方だと思いますが、1994年発行のため、それなりの日焼け、擦れ等はあります。
洋書ですので、英語でいろんなジャンルを多読したい方はいかがでしょうか?
Wikipediaから
The Emperor of Ice-Cream is a 1965
coming-of-age novel[1] by writer
Brian Moore. Set in
Belfast during the Second World War, it tells the story of 17-year-old Gavin Burke who, admitting "war was freedom, freedom from futures", defies his
nationalist and Catholic family by volunteering as an
air raid warden with the largely Protestant
ARP.
[1] The novel follows Gavin's journey as he realises that there are those on the other side of the city's bitter communal division whose friendships offer a wider horizon.
Based in part on Moore's own wartime experiences,
[2][3] he described it as the most autobiographical of his novels.
[2] Moore left Belfast in 1943 to join the British Ministry of War Transport and worked himself for a period with the ARP in London.
The book is dedicated, as were all of Moore's subsequent novels, to his partner Jean,
[4] who became his second wife two years after its publication. Its title is taken from
Wallace Stevens' poem "
The Emperor of Ice-Cream".
The book was dramatised by the Northern Irish actor, playwright and theatre director Bill Morrison; the play was performed at Dublin's
Abbey Theatre in 1977.