Dimensions
166 x 241 x 27mm
Roy Foster's books on Ireland have always generated vigorous discussion, but in The Irish Story he breaks fresh ground even by his own standards.
Here he argues that, over the centuries, Irish history itself has been turned into "a story". He examines how and why the key moments of Ireland's past - the 1798 Rising, the Famine, the Literary Revival, Easter 1916, the shifts and dislocations of the 1960s - have been worked into narratives, drawing on Ireland's powerful oral culture, on elements of myth, folklore, ghost stories and romance.
The result of this constant reinterpretation is a "Story of Ireland", complete, as any story is, with plot, drama, suspense and revelation. And, of course, its own fascinating cast of storytellers - from Sullivan and Standish O'Grady to Butler and Lyons, from Yeats and Bowen to Frank McCourt and Gerry Adams.
