Author(s): Christopher Koch

SECONDHAND BOOKS | TRAVEL

When bestselling Australian novelist Christopher Koch sets out on a journey through Ireland with his friend Brian Mooney, he is looking for traces of the 19th century: the time of the Famine, when two of his great-great grandmothers came to Van Diemen's Land, one of them as a convict.What he finds, through chance meetings in pubs with IRA supporters, encounters with musicians, and an interview with leading historian and journalist Tim Pat Coogan, is the dynamic new Ireland of today, enjoying its transformation into a leading European economy, despite the unresolved struggle in the North.For Koch, though, the true soul of this land is to be found in the countryside, where doorways can still be seen to different levels of the Faery Otherworld: the Many-Coloured Land. This he portrays in prose both lyrical and clear, offering rare literary pleasures to the reader.

2003. A near fine, unread copy.