Savage and incendiary yet written with a bruised and battered majesty, Topographia Hibernica collects Blindboy Boatclub's audacious fictional musing on the twenty-first century Irish condition.
'You don't fully appreciate how large a donkey's head is until it's beside you in a Fiat Punto. The view in my mirror was furry and violent. I was driving blind.'
Driving with a donkey stuffed in the back seat; jackdaws pecking brains out through the roof of a confessional box; cat piss and astronauts. This is the world not as you see it, but as it is, twisted from the maverick mind of Blindboyboatclub.
These are stories of the strange unsettlings in the souls of men caught in between the past and the possible; stories of heart-blinding rage and disquieting compassion.
Taking its title from a twelfth-century English manuscript of the same name, which dehumanised the people and culture of Ireland to facilitate domination, Topographia Hibernica is a collection that unravels the knotted threads of humanity, nature and colonisation from a contemporary Irish perspective.
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
ISBN: 9781529371628
Number of pages: 288
Weight: 416 g
Dimensions: 216 x 142 x 30 mm
Powered by immense, perverse energy out of the Limerick idiom, the collection generates a singular music that is memorable, unsettling and humane. Moments of beauty dazzle amid the profanity, as pathos and comedy are braided together - Guardian
Eerie, dark and twisted . . . Blindboy's passion for Irish nature, mythology and folklore lends a spiritual profundity - Buzz
One of the most gifted writers of his generation - Michael Harding - Irish Times
A bestseller in the bag - Irish Independent
A cultural phenomenon...Earnest and intellectual, but also funny and down-to-earth....Talking to him can feel like skittering around a galaxy of Wikipedia wormholes (in a good way) - New York Times
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