A Goat's Song

'One of the most powerful pieces of fiction to emerge from Ireland in the past few decades.' Terry Eagleton, London Review of Books

Discover the classic novel of 'a modern master' (Irish Times)

'His great masterpiece.' Kevin Barry
'A rare and powerful book.' E.

Discover the classic novel of 'a modern master' (Irish Times)

'His great masterpiece.' Kevin Barry
'A rare and powerful book.' E. Annie Proulx
'One of those books that makes its own language.' Anne Enright

Jack Ferris, playwright, drunk, is mired in contemplative misery in a fisherman's cottage on the windy bleak west coast of Ireland. Mourning his love affair with Catherine Adams, an actress and Protestant from the North, he summons her instead in his imagination. In doing so, he tells the story of her father Jonathan, failed parson and retired RUC man, shamed into exile by a moment of violence in Derry years ago. Masterly, elegiac, A Goat's Song conjures the contrasting landscapes and opposing myths of a nation divided.