A Ghost in the Throat
Author(s): Doireann Ní Ghríofa
A Post Irish Book Awards Nonfiction Book of the Year * A Guardian Best Book of 2020 * Shortlisted for the 2021 Rathbones Folio Prize * Longlisted for the 2021 Republic of Consciousness Prize * Winner of the James Tait Black Biography Prize * A New York Times New & Noteworthy Title * Longlisted for the 2021 Gordon Burn Prize *
When we first met, I was a child, and she had been dead for centuries. On discovering her murdered husband's body, an eighteenth-century Irish noblewoman drinks handfuls of his blood and composes an extraordinary lament. Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill's poem travels through the centuries, finding its way to a new mother who has narrowly avoided her own fatal tragedy. When she realizes that the literature dedicated to the poem reduces Eibhlín Dubh's life to flimsy sketches, she wants more: the details of the poet's girlhood and old age; her unique rages, joys, sorrows, and desires; the shape of her days and site of her final place of rest.
What follows is an adventure in which Doireann Ní Ghríofa sets out to discover Eibhlín Dubh's erased life--and in doing so, discovers her own. Moving fluidly between past and present, quest and elegy, poetry and those who make it, A Ghost in the Throat is a shapeshifting book: a record of literary obsession; a narrative about the erasure of a people, of a language, of women; a meditation on motherhood and on translation; and an unforgettable story about finding your voice by freeing another's.
Product Information
Review: THE TIMES 'Dazzles readers from the get-go... A contender for book of the year' NEW STATESMAN 'It's an alien and disconcerting experience: it results in a book that takes you and shakes... Electrifying' IRISH INDEPENDENT 'A book like this comes along once every few years and obliterates every clear definition of genre and form. I mean no exaggeration here: A Ghost in the Throat is astounding and utterly fresh.' SUNDAY INDEPENDENT 'With luminous language and candid details, this book shimmers with honesty and scholarship. A truly original read.' IRISH TIMES 'A truly unique project that comes alive on the page.' SUNDAY TIMES 'Billed as a genre-busting blend of 'autofiction, essay, scholarship, sleuthing and literary translation', the book is an extraordinary feat of ventriloquism delivered in a lush, lyrical prose that dazzles readers from the get-go. The book's triumph rests on several factors: the translation project is admirable; the authorial voice is empathetic; the treatment of issues that may not reflect well on the author are delivered with honesty; and, above all, the language is sumptuous, almost symphonic, in its intensity. When you write like this there is almost nothing a writer cannot get away with... One of the best books of this dreadful year.' SUNDAY BUSINESS POST 'A masterpiece on motherhood...I grieved when I closed this book, and found the only remedy was to turn back to the first page, and begin this masterpiece over again' IRISH EXAMINER 'A raw and haunting read that lingers long in the mind. ' RTE Culture 'An extraordinary piece of work'. NEW YORK TIMES. 'A powerful, bewitching blend of memoir and literary investigation' THE CHICAGO 'Ni Ghriofa's essayistic and intimate style recalls the inter-disciplinary perambulations of W.G. Sebald and the uncompromising feminism of Maggie Nelson' SEVERINE 'It is brilliantly written, Ni Ghriofa's reputation as a poet paving the way for such staggeringly sonic, rolling prose. And it is a feminist exclamation mark, imploring from the beginning: "Join in", Ni Ghriofa insists'
General Fields
- :
- : Tramp Press
- : Tramp Press
- : 01 August 2021
- : 198mm x 129mm x 198mm
- : books
Special Fields
- : BM
- : 224
- : very good
- : 828.9208
- : Paperback
- : Doireann Ní Ghríofa