The dirty dust

11.25

In this novel all characters lie dead in their graves. This, however, does not impair their banter or their appetite for news of above-ground happenings from the recently-arrived. Told entirely in dialogue, Ó Cadhain’s daring novel listens in on the gossip, rumours, backbiting, complaining, and obsessing of the local community.

In stock

SKU: 9780300219821 Category: Tag:

Description

The original English-language translation of Ó Cadhain’s raucous masterpiece Cré na Cille, which Colm Tóibìn has called the “greatest novel to be written in the Irish language”

“An audacious novel rendered entirely in dialogue . . . [with] hilarious quarrels and devastating put-downs that reflect O’Cadhain’s finely attuned ear for the nimble language of his people. He does not judge their time-wasting pettiness, so much as he celebrates the flaws that make us so tragically, wonderfully, human.”-Dan Barry, New York Times Book Review

Máirtìn Ó Cadhain’s irresistible and infamous novel The Dirty Dust is consistently ranked as the most important prose work in modern Irish, yet no translation for English-language readers has ever before been published. Alan Titley’s vigorous new translation, full of the brio and guts of Ó Cadhain’s original, at last brings the pleasures of this great satiric novel to the far wider audience it deserves.

In The Dirty Dust all characters lie dead in their graves. This, however, does not impair their banter or their appetite for news of aboveground happenings from the recently arrived. Told entirely in dialogue, Ó Cadhain’s daring novel listens in on the gossip, rumors, backbiting, complaining, and obsessing of the local community. In the afterlife, it seems, the same old life goes on beneath the sod. Only nothing can be done about it-apart from talk. In this merciless yet comical portrayal of a closely bound community, Ó Cadhain remains keenly attuned to the absurdity of human behavior, the lilt of Irish gab, and the nasty, deceptive magic of human connection.

Also available from Yale University Press: Graveyard Clay, an annotated edition of Cré na Cille translated by Liam Mac Con Iomaire and Tim Robinson

Additional information

Weight 0.295 kg
Dimensions 19.7 × 12.7 × 2.6 cm
Author

Publisher

Imprint

Cover

Paperback

Pages

336

Language

English

Edition

1st paperback ed

Dewey

891.62343 (edition:23)

Readership

General – Trade / Code: K

Reviews

There are no reviews yet.

Be the first to review “The dirty dust”

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *