Country: A Novel

A brutal book about a brutal time, Country: A Novel by Michael Hughes takes the bare bones of The Iliad and thoroughly transposes it into 1996 Ireland, with the years-long conflict between the British and the IRA. Woman trouble sparks resentment between Achill, the IRA’s prize sniper, and one of their leaders. When Achill refuses to risk himself over another man’s pride, all hell breaks loose. 

Country takes a classic story and turns it into a nail-biting thriller. Extraordinary prose meets exceptional style with this volume. It is brutal, beautiful, and haunting in its rendition, handled by a masterful storyteller. The story has a poetry all of its own in the cadence and building drama, as an uneasy ceasefire that can be broken at any moment. The characters come across as completely modern and yet remain recognizable archetypes of their more ancient relatives. These new archetypes are raw and evocative, transformed into something thoroughly Irish and thoroughly fantastic. These characters are unafraid to grub in the mud, their stories taking away the glories of war and making it instead the gritty, brutal, bloody mess it is under all the myth and luster.