Join Irish novelist and journalist AUDREY MAGEE—acclaimed author of The Undertaking—for a discussion of her new book “The Colony: A Novel.”
VIRTUAL EVENT DETAILS
Tuesday May 17, 2022 5:00 PM ET
Harvard Book Store
Get Tickets: https://www.harvard.com/event/virtual_event_audrey_magee/
About the Author:
Audrey Magee is the author of The Undertaking, a novel shortlisted for several prizes including the Women’s Prize for Fiction and France’s Prix du Premier Roman. She worked as a journalist for 12 years, writing extensively for The Times, the Irish Times, the Guardian and Observer as well as broadcasting for RTÉ and the BBC. Between 1996 and 2001, Magee worked as the Ireland Correspondent for The Times, covering events in Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, including the Good Friday Agreement, the Omagh bomb and the Drumcree stand-off. She lives in Wicklow, Ireland.
About the Book:
It is the summer of 1979. An English painter travels to a small island off the west coast of Ireland. Mr. Lloyd takes the last leg by currach, though boats with engines are available and he doesn’t much like the sea. He wants the authentic experience, to be changed by this place, to let its quiet and light fill him, give him room to create.
He doesn’t know that a Frenchman follows close behind. Jean-Pierre Masson has visited the island for many years, studying the language of those who make it their home. He is fiercely protective of their isolation, deems it essential to exploring his theories of language preservation and identity.
But the people who live on this rock—three miles long and half a mile wide—have their own views on what is being recorded, what is being taken, and what ought to be given in return. Over the summer, each of them—from great-grandmother Bean Uí Fhloinn, to widowed Mairéad, to fifteen-year-old James, who is determined to avoid the life of a fisherman—will wrestle with their values and desires. Meanwhile, all over Ireland, violence is erupting. And there is blame enough to go around.
An expertly woven portrait of character and place, a stirring investigation into yearning to find one’s way, and an unflinchingly political critique of the long, seething cost of imperialism, Audrey Magee’s The Colony is a novel that transports, that celebrates beauty and connection, and that reckons with the inevitable ruptures of independence.
