This Is The Way

WINNER OF THE KERRY GROUP IRISH NOVEL OF THE YEAR 2013
SHORTLISTED FOR THE ENCORE PRIZE 2013
SHORTLISTED FOR THE BORD GAIS IRISH NOVEL OF THE YEAR 2013

With the voice of Anthony Sonaghan – a modern-day Traveller born to a powerful, mythic inheritance – Gavin Corbett summons a world we thought we knew as we have not seen or heard it before:

‘There I was now. In a room, a tidy room, tidier than any room I been in before. The bed was hard. The walls they gave no sound. A heavy window thumped itself shut. Good I says. Peace I says.’

Anthony, the son of a Sonaghan father and a Gillaroo mother, is descended from two families whose enmity is a matter of legend. Though he belongs to a storytelling tradition, Anthony has grown up away from his people, and is only dimly aware of their disputes. That is until the blood feud touches him, and he comes to Dublin to lie low. His time in the city is a reckoning. Only there does he appreciate the strength of his heritage but also its otherness.

In an unforgettable feat of imposture, Gavin Corbett has found a startling idiom – vivid and innocent – with which to speak for Anthony and that other, Travelling world.