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Exiles (Paperback)
Loot Price: R309
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Exiles (Paperback)
Series: Translations 11
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List price R378
Loot Price R309
Discovery Miles 3 090
You Save R69 (18%)
Expected to ship within 9 - 15 working days
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Two Irish migrants on the cusp of new lives in post-war Britain.
Two young people who dare to dream of a better life, and dance the
music of survival in their adopted homeland. Afraid that his wife
and children will arrive over any day, Trevor is in a hurry to
settle old scores with his rivals and to prove himself the top
fighting man within his London-Irish community of drinkers and
navvies while Nano seeks to escape the stifling conformity and
petty jealousies of her peers and forget her failed love-match at
home. Will Trevor finally prove himself "the man" and secure the
respect that he feels is his by virtue of blood and tribe? Does
Nano have it in her to break free of the suffocating bonds of home
and community and find love with Lithuanian beau Julius? Written at
a time when the Irish were "building England up and tearing it down
again," and teeming with the raucous energy of post-war Kilburn,
Cricklewood and Camden Town this novel is one of the very few
authentic portrayals of working-class life in modern Irish
literature. Up to one in four UK citizens claims Irish heritage.
For each decade of the 1950s alone - a time of British postwar boom
and Irish economic decline - over half of Ireland's population,
those coming of age in that decade, emigrated: the majority to
England. And while Irish-owned companies today account for one
tenth of the almost GBP100bn British construction industry, those
navvies who built our homes, roads and hotels comprise a forgotten
generation, alongside the nurses that made the crossing alone to
power our nascent Welfare State. Donall Mac Amhlaigh was among
them, working on construction sites throughout London and the
Midlands, including the M1 and M6 motorways. In this
autobiographical novel are the people who later calcified into
stereotypes of Irish immigrants and their haunts: the navvy, the
drinker, the fighter, the nurse. As with the Polish builder,
Romanian gangster or Spanish nurse of today, such caricatures have
their source in real lives adapting to economic reality. 'A
wonderful addition to Irish literature.' - Colum McCann, National
Book Award winner 'I cannot stress strongly enough the importance
of bringing this work to a wider readership.' -Tony Murray -
Director, Irish Studies Centre, London Metropolitan University,
London. 'Donall Mac Amhlaigh is the most perceptive and informed
writer on the Irish in 20th century Britain.' - Professor Enda
Delaney, author of The Irish in Post-War Britain
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