The History of Magpies

Here are twelve scintillating fresh tales by one Desmond Hogan, of Ireland’s leading writers, who has extended and redefined the tradition of the Irish short story with inimitable verbal force. Embedded in Hogan’s uniquely glancing poetic style, they form capsule character studies and micro-histories of society’s underbelly, variously located in the streets and back alleys of Edinburgh, London, Zagreb, Cork, Dublin, and in the small rural townscape provinces: Kerry to Limerick, Kinsale, Athlone and beyond, each refracted in compressed jewels of painterly prose that explodes in kaleidoscopic bursts of colour and imagery.

These stories are vividly peopled by young homosexuals, Travellers and priests, borstal boys and joyriders, prisoners on remand, hostel dwellers, drinkers and addicts, artisans and the unemployed, and treat their marginalized lives with celebratory dispassion. The story titles alone speak for their milieu: ‘The Big River,’ ‘Café Remember,’ ‘Through the Town,’ “Brimstone Butterfly,’ ’Thornback Ray,’ ‘The Spindle Tree,’ ‘The Metlar,’ ‘Walking Through Truth Land,’ and ‘Famine Rain.’ Here is a writer at the top of his game, Desmond Hogan, documenting an Ireland where few have dared to tread.