Hugo Hamilton was born the child of German-Irish parents in Dublin, Ireland, in 1953. He only attended schools where the teaching took place in his father's language, Gaelic. As the family spoke no English at home – Hamilton spoke German with his mother –, he learnt the language in which he writes today on the streets. Before he began writing short stories and novels, he worked as a journalist and travelled widely throughout Europe.

To date, Hamilton has published five novels and a collection of short stories. Three of the novels are set in Germany and reflect – determined by the influence of both German and Irish culture – the viewpoint of an outsider. His double cultural background, his "dual" identity have led Hamilton to become one of the "European" voices of his generation. His mother's death stimulated Hamilton to investigate – in "war-love" – his "divided identity" and the "almost-fiction of his own Germanness".

The protagonist of his two Ireland novels is the guardian of the law Pat Coyne.

The Times wrote of "Headbanger", a "top-class, black-humour crime story that recalls a 'film noir' of the 50s": "This is what might emerge if Flann O'Brien's universal scholar De Selby crossed the novels of Raymond Chandler with those of Patrick McCabe."
Hamilton has received numerous awards and fellowships for his work. In 1992, he was presented with the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature.

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