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Fighting with Shadows or, Sciamachy
Initially published in 1984, Dermot Healy’s stunning first novel, Fighting with Shadows , returns to print after almost thirty years. Largely set in the border village of Fanacross, Co. Fermanagh, as Ireland stumbles clumsily toward modernity, the Allen family negotiate a bitter and troubled terrain. Fighting with Shadows offers extraordinary and poetic glimpses of the compelling lives of ordinary people. The novel’s landscape is of borderlands, of in-between spaces; it tells of violently sundered geographical borders, of maddening religious differences, of the anguished gaps between people as they struggle to find each other, and of how the dead reside among its inhabitants long after they’ve passed. At once realist account and nightmarish magic realist fable, Fighting with Shadows occupies a truly important position in the history of modern Irish fiction.
416 pages, Paperback
First published October 16, 2015
49 people want to read
About the author
Dermot Healy
34Ìýbooks38ÌýfollowersDermot Healy (born 1947 in Finnea, County Westmeath, Ireland) was an Irish novelist, playwright and poet. He won the Hennessy Award (1974 and 1976), the Tom Gallon Award (1983), and the Encore Award (1995). In 2011, he was shortlisted for the Poetry Now Award for his poetry collection, A Fool's Errand.
Healy was a member of Aosdána and of its governing body, the Toscaireacht, and lived in County Sligo, Ireland.
Healy was a member of Aosdána and of its governing body, the Toscaireacht, and lived in County Sligo, Ireland.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 6, 2023
One of Ireland’s most celebrated writers, Healy’s first novel still seems to elude critical fanfare or reappraisal, in spite of a lavish 2014 reissue from Dalkey Archive. A highly poeticised family epic centring around the murder of a patriarch, Healy’s narrative freely wanders into the interior of its personnel in brilliant exploratory chapters of strange majesty and perspicacity, pulling the reader into a harrowing, difficult saga untethered to conventional narrative norms. The novel’s plotless, drifting feel might account for its unpopularity, however anyone with a passing appreciation for the heavyweights of post-Joycean Irish literature should manoeuvre themselves in front of this maddening, mercurial novel pronto.
October 19, 2022
put this down for awhile - first 200 pages are a fucking marvel. then it moves away from the interesting stuff - hotel section didnt do it for me as much. but a beautiful beautiful debut novel all the same, i took so many photos of entire pages bc the writing and character were so stunning i nearly cried.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
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