Turlough

The man held hostage by fundamentalist Sh'ite militiamen in the suburbs of Beirut was visited and sustained by the presence of Turlough O'Carolan during captivity. Now he tells O'Carolan's story, rich with the textures and smells of rural Ireland and peopled by a house of angels and devils. Turlough is narrated largely by the legendary blind Irish harper from his death bed, and through the recollections of those closest to him. It powerfully evokes a lost Ireland of famine and disease, eviction and oppression. O'Carolan's Rabelaisian desire for drink and women is counterpointed by his artistic struggle towards the great music and some kind of inner peace. Driven by demons and dreams, riven by contradictions, Turlough emerges as a great man, full of frailty: a blind man afraid of the dark. The book is a remarkable historical journey, and a huge imaginative feat.