I Could Read the Sky

I Could Read the Sky

Reprint

Paperback (22 Jun 2023)

Save $5.28

  • RRP $26.07
  • $20.79
Add to basket

Includes delivery to the United States

10+ copies available online - Usually dispatched within 7 days

Publisher's Synopsis

'Think about a tune … the unsayable, the invisible, the longing in music. Here is a book of tunes without musical notes … It wrings the heart' John Berger

'The voice that O'Grady has crafted succeeds so well...running in parallel, Pyke's stark arresting images are laced between the paragraphs and chapters. The interplay between the two mediums is delicately powerful' Hilary White

'A masterpiece' Robert Macfarlane

'O'Grady does not just respond to Pyke's stark, beautiful photographs: he gives voice to thousands' Louise Kennedy

'The experience of Irish emigration uniquely and powerfully illuminated' Mark Knopfler

'If the words tell the story of the voiceless, the bleak lovely photographs show their faces. Fiction rarely gets as close to the messy, glorious truth as do memories and photographs. This rare novel dares to use both' Charlotte Mendelson, TLS

An old man lies alone and sleepless in London. Before dawn he is taken by an image from his childhood in the West of Ireland, and begins to remember a migrant's life. Haunted by the faces and the land he left behind, he calls forth the bars and boxing booths of England, the potato fields and building sites, the music he played and the woman he loved.

Timothy O'Grady's tender, vivid prose and Steve Pyke's starkly beautiful photographs combine to make a unique work of fiction, an act of remembering suffused with loss, defiance and an unforgettable loveliness. An Irish life with echoes of the lives of unregarded migrant workers everywhere. Since it was first published in 1997, I Could Read the Sky has achieved the status of a classic.

About the Publisher

Unbound

Unbound

Unbound was founded by three writers: Dan Kieran, Justin Pollard & John Mitchinson. We think people who love books - primarily readers and writers - deserve a say in what does or doesn't get published. You may not be aware of it, but even best selling authors are beginning to have very restrictive parameters imposed on the kinds of books they get to write. Put simply, there are lots of potentially great books we're not getting the opportunity to read.

Book information

ISBN: 9781800182714
Publisher: Unbound
Imprint: Unbound
Pub date:
Edition: Reprint
DEWEY: 823.92
DEWEY edition: 23
Language: English
Sales rank: 33633
Number of pages: 272
Weight: 435g
Height: 129mm
Width: 196mm
Spine width: 26mm