Dark - Softcover

John McGahern's second novel, The Dark, confirmed and enhanced the reputation he gained with his first, The Barracks. The scene is set in rural Ireland and the central theme is adolescence, impelled forward by ambition and sexuality, guilty and uncontrollable, contorted and twisted by a puritanical and passionate religion and, above all, by a strange, powerful, ambiguous relationship between son and widower father. Against a background evoked with quiet, undemonstrative mastery, McGahern explores with precision and tenderness a situation superficially very ordinary but inwardly an agony of longing and despair.

John McGahern was born in Dublin in 1934 and brought up in the West of Ireland. He is a graduate of University College, Dublin. He has worked as a Primary School teacher and has held various academic posts at universities in Britain, Ireland and America.In the opinion of the Observer, John McGahern is 'Ireland's greatest living novelist'. He is the author of six highly acclaimed novels and four collections of short stories, and has been the recipient of numerous awards and honours, including a Society of Authors Travelling Scholarship, the American-Irish Award, the Prix Etrang re Ecureuil and the Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Amongst Women, which has won both the GPA and the Irish Times Award, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and made into a four-part BBC television series. His work has appeared in anthologies and has been translated into many languages.John McGahern lives in County Leitrim, Ireland.