Top

We have updated our Privacy Policy Please take a moment to review it. By continuing to use this site, you agree to the terms of our updated Privacy Policy.

Troubles

On sale

31st May 2018

Price: £19.99

Select a format

Selected: Audiobook Downloadable / ISBN-13: 9781409178903

Disclosure: If you buy products using the retailer buttons above, we may earn a commission from the retailers you visit.

Winner of the 1970 lost Man Booker prize in 2010.

Major Brendan Archer travels to Ireland – to the Majestic Hotel and to the fiancée he acquired on a rash afternoon’s leave three years ago. Despite her many letters, the lady herself proves elusive, and the Major’s engagement is short-lived. But he is unable to detach himself from the alluring discomforts of the crumbling hotel. Ensconced in the dim and shabby splendour of the Palm Court, surrounded by gently decaying old ladies and proliferating cats, the Major passes the summer. So hypnotic are the faded charms of the Majestic, the Major is almost unaware of the gathering storm. But this is Ireland in 1919 – and the struggle for independence is about to explode with brutal force.

(p) Orion Publishing Group 2018

Reviews

John Banville
Farrell's vision and voice are unique, inimitable
IRISH INDEPENDENT
No finer work has ever been written about this transitional period in Irish history: it remains a landmark in 20th-century Irish literature, and one that deserves to win The One And Only Great Retrospective Booker
Rachel Cooke, Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival
Like Fawlty Towers written by Evelyn Waugh
Guardian
A work of genius
GUARDIAN
TROUBLES has everything: great story, compelling characters, believable dialogue and big ideas. It's a book good enough to win the Booker in any year. Not just 1970.
Mail on Sunday
One of the finest novels of the past 50 years
Rachel Cooke, Observer
Funny, sad and beautifully written; prescient, wise, original and unexpectedly eccentric