Description

By (author) O’Neill Jamie

Short /annotation
The critically acclaimed Irish contemporary classic in a beautiful new
Scribner edition

~ The Irish contemporary classic in a beautiful new edition ~

”Weren”t you never out for an easy dip?” he asked . . . ”I don”t mean the baths, I mean with a pal. For a lark like.”

Out at the Forty Foot, that great jut of Dublin rock where gentlemen bathe in the scandalous nude, two boys meet day after day. There they make a pact: that
Doyler will teach
Jim to swim, and in a year, they will swim the bay to the distant beacon of the Muglins rock, to raise the Green and claim it for themselves. As a turbulent year drives inexorably towards the Easter Rising of 1916 and Ireland sets forth on a path to uncertain glory, a tender, secret love story unfolds. Written with verve and mastery in a modern Irish tradition descended from James Joyce and Flann O”Brien,
At Swim, Two Boys is a shimmering novel of unforgettable ambition, intensity and humanity.

”One of the greatest Irish novels ever written” David Marcus

”The music of Jamie O”Neill”s prose creates a new Irish symphony”
Peter Ackroyd

”Heartachingly beautiful”
Independent on Sunday

”A vivid picture of human freedom” Sunday Times

Review quote
‘At Swim, Two Boys
gets nearer to the truth of our lives than most established writers dream of’

Review quote
‘Jamie O’Neill’s masterpiece
holds a special place in my heart for its
bravery, its originality, its memorable characters and the dexterity of its language’

Review quote
‘The music of Jamie O’Neill’s prose
creates a new Irish symphony’

Review quote
‘O’Neill has stepped boldly and knowingly into the c
ompany of the Irish high modernists . . . At Swim, Two Boys is both footnote and foot forward, flexing its muscles within the Irish canon and
breaking new emotional ground’

Review quote
‘A
vivid picture of human freedom; of moving from fear of the world to acceptance of its fluid variety, while illuminating the
nature of the imagination that makes it possible to do so’

Biographical note
Jamie O”Neill was brought up in Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin. He spent ten years working as a night porter whilst writing AT SWIM, TWO BOYS.