Ciaran Carson
Ciaran Carson
CIARAN CARSON was born in 1948 in Belfast. He is Professor of Poetry and Director of the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at Queen's University Belfast. His translation of the Old Irish epic TAIN BO CUAILNGE (THE TAIN) was published by Penguin Classics in 2007. He has published numerous collections of poetry which have been shortlisted for both the Irish Book Award for Literature and the Whitbread Poetry Award, and won the Irish Times Irish Literature Prize for Poetry. He is the author of a memoir of Belfast, THE STAR FACTORY (Granta 1997), and FISHING FOR AMBER (Granta 2000) which was longlisted for the Booker Prize. In 2002 his new translation by Carson of DANTE’S INFERNO was published to great acclaim. He lives in Belfast.

The Pen Friend
The Penfriend


‘Triumphant. Twisted and playful. The story is relatively easy to follow, which is not to say that it is also a fiendishly intricate puzzle machine. This novel is an original creation. Technically complex but oddly simple, arcanely informative, humorously puzzling, sensible, sensational, compassionate, it deserves to win whatever prizes are going. For the Man Booker jury, here’s a book and a man.’ Brian Lynch, Irish Independent

‘If Seamus Heaney is the voice of rural Ulster, Ciaran Carson is the
laureate of the urban North.’ Terry Eagleton, New Statesman

More than twenty years after the end of their love affair, Gabriel receives an unexpected and cryptic postcard from his old flame. It is the first of thirteen cards from her, each one provoking a series of reveries about their relationship and prompting Gabriel to write a letter to his ex-lover in which he dwells in sensuous detail on perfumes, clothes, conversations as he tries to recapture the spirit of their romance in 1980s Belfast. 'The Pen Friend' is, however, much more than a love story. As Gabriel teases out the significance of the cards, the layers of meaning in the images and messages, his reveries develop into richly textured meditations on writing, memory, spiritualism and surveillance. The result is an elaborate and intricate web of fact and fiction, a narrative that marries sharp historical insights with imaginative exuberance, a strange and wonderful novel confirming Ciaran Carson as one of Ireland's most exciting writers.

 

Sales

Blackstaff Press UK & Ireland

Material: finished copies.