Seamus Deane’s luminous first novel is a haunting account of childhood set in Northern Ireland in the 1940s and 1950s.

A novel in which the boy narrator grows up enclosed in two worlds. One is legendary - a Donegal house where children are stolen away by demonic forces; the other is actual - the city of Derry in the Northern Ireland of the 1940s and 1950s, a place haunted by political enmities and family secrets.

Shortlisted
The Booker Prize 1996
Published by
Jonathan Cape
Publication date
Seamus Deane

Seamus Deane

About the Author

Seamus Deane was born in Derry, Northern Ireland. His novel Reading in the Dark was shortlisted for the 1996 Booker Prize.
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