The Valparaiso Voyage

Description

A literary thriller with a heart. The Valparaiso Voyage blows the lid off the Celtic Tiger and looks at the corruption which spawned today's Ireland. Dermot Bolger is one of the leading figures on the Irish literary scene. Very influential, amazingly energetic and prolific, popular and well respected. This is his eighth novel (and his third for Flamingo). Bolger's last novel, Temptation, was a departure for this author. It was a story of family life, told from a woman's perspective. The Valparaiso Voyage is, as you might say, Bolger returning to familiar territory -- back to chronicling the darker side of contemporary Dublin life. The Valparaiso Voyage is the story of Brendan Brogan, who grew up in the small town of Navan on the outskirts of Dublin. An unhappy childhood, spent searching for love and affection, leads to an unhappy adulthood spent gambling and trying to hold a difficult marriage together. When circumstances offer Brogan a chance to fake his own death, he seizes the chance and runs -- far away to Portugal where a new life beckons. But no-one can escape the past entirely, and when his father is found murdered, Brogan returns to Dublin. Here he finds a new Ireland, wracked with corruption, everyone -- politicians, bankers, businessmen, councillors -- caught up in it, including his own father. Tormented by memories and old resentments, Brogan nevertheless feels he must solve the riddle of his father's death. And he finds himself not in the least surprised to discover that the rot set in many years ago, back in the Navan of his childhood. A cracking, fast-paced literary thriller, contemporary and topical.

Dermot Bolger was born in Dublin in 1959. His novels and plays have won many awards, in Ireland and internationally. He has also published several volumes of poetry. Bolger has been a notable and energetic champion of new Irish writers in his capacity as founder-publisher of Raven Arts Press, which he ran until 1992, whereafter he went on to start New Island Books. He is also the editor of the Picador Book of Contemporary Irish Writing, and editor of Finbar's Hotel and Ladies' Night at Finbar's Hotel.

'No Irish novelist since McGahern has been so obsessed with the poetics of love, death and sex. No Irish novelist has so brilliantly captured the suburban underbelly of the city, the crazy unofficial lives.' Colm Toibin 'Joyce, O'Flaherty, Brian Moore, a fistful of O'Briens, this is a succulent Who's Who of Irish writing, and Dermot Bolger is of the same ilk. An exceptional literary gift.' Independent 'Bolger's writing is so strong, so exact, so much the right colour for each moment. Bare and passionate.' Financial Times