Divine Magnetic Lands: A Journey in America

Description

In 1973, aged twenty-two, Timothy O'Grady left America. For the next thirty years he lived in and wrote about Europe. As he did, the American counter-culture crashed, Ronald Reagan came and went, wars were declared and the country was attacked by air. Much of the world began to look at America in a new way, wondering what had happened to it and where it was going. Among them was Timothy O'Grady, and he decided to go back and investigate. He went out onto the American road, travelling over fifteen thousand miles through thirty-five states. He met academics, the homeless, war veterans, political activists, New Orleans rappers, billionaires, novelists and a Ku Klux Klansman. In every bar he stopped in, it seemed, there was a story of American life to be heard.

Timothy O'Grady was born in the USA and has lived in Ireland, London and Spain. He is the author (with Kenneth Griffith) of Curious Journey- An Oral History of Ireland's Unfinished Revolution, and the novels Motherland, which won the David Higham award for the best first novel in 1989, and I Could Read the Sky, which won the Encore award for best second novel of 1997. His book On Golf was published by Yellow Jersey to superb reviews in 2003.