This author focuses on the prose treatment of human relationships and social themes. His style is characterized by keen insight into character psychology and realistic depiction of their inner conflicts. Through engaging stories, he explores the complexity of human nature and the ethical dilemmas of the modern era. His works offer readers deep reflection on questions of morality, love, and the meaning of life.
A man is shot dead before the eyes of his young son as they work together in the fields - another victim of the violence in Northern Ireland. In the city, a confused and frightened old man grieves for his loss. When the young boy's mother moves them both from their country home to Belfast, the old man's life becomes entwined with that of the boy.
Martin has travelled a long way from his brutal childhood in the Loyalist heartlands of Belfast and built a life he never imagined he would have. Returning home one night to find police cars waiting, he feels his sins must have finally caught up with him. But, instead, they bring news of a senseless tragedy.
"Michael has travelled a long way from his boyhood under the endless skies of the Midwest. His retirement is peaceful, if solitary: looking out on the wide waters of the Atlantic from the coast of Ireland. But one day there is a visitation: a mysterious car on the seafront, and a package delivered. From its contents, Michael understands that he has been commissioned to undertake a final journey. As Michael makes his way deep into a distant desert - a strange and liminal landscape that lies between hell and redemption - he undertakes another journey, into long-suppressed memories: of Vietnam and the dying days of war, and the lost woman who has haunted him for decades."--Provided by publisher
WINNER OF THE KERRY GROUP IRISH BOOK AWARDS Set in a frozen winter landscape, the new novel from the prize-winning, acclaimed author David Park is a psychologically astute, expertly crafted portrait of a father's inner life and a family in crisisAn Irish Times Book of 2018I am entering the frozen land, although to which country it belongs I cannot say. The world is shrouded in snow. Transport has ground to a halt. Tom must venture out into a transformed and treacherous landscape to collect his son, sick and stranded in student lodgings. But on this solitary drive from Belfast to Sunderland, Tom will be drawn into another journey, one without map or guide, and is forced to chart pathways of family history haunted by memory and clouded in regret. Written in spare, crystalline prose by one of the most important voices in contemporary Irish writing, Travelling in a Strange Land is a work of exquisite loss and transformative grace. It is a novel about fathers and sons, grief, memory, family and love; about the gulfs that lie between us and those we love, and the wrong turns that we take on our way to find them.
It is December in Belfast, Christmas is approaching and three sets of people are about to make their way to Amsterdam. Alan, a university art teacher, goes on a pilgrimage to the city of his youth with troubled teenage son Jack; middle-aged couple Marion and Richard take a break from running their garden centre to celebrate Marion's birthday; and Karen, a single mother struggling to make ends meet, joins her daughter's hen party. As these people brush against each other in the squares, museums and parks of Amsterdam, their lives are transfigured as they encounter the complexities of love in a city that challenges what has gone before.