The Captains and the Kings by Jennifer Johnston (GT610)

Published 1974: Softcover / Very Good Condition

Original pictorial stiff card covers. 142 clean and bright pages. Slight shelf wear on covers and slightly rubbed with time consistent with age. (GT610)

Postage €4.00.
An Post prepaid postage envelopes within the Republic of Ireland, with no weight restrictions from €6.95.

Regarded as one of Ireland’s foremost contemporary novelists, this was her first novel & earned her the Author’s Club First Novel Award.

Alone with melancholic memories of his past, a widower finds new life after striking up a friendship with a village boy.

A poignant debut novel of age, loneliness and friendship across divides...

Mr Prendergast, an elderly Anglo-Irishman, is living out his last years in the decaying splendour of his family mansion. As his mind wanders through the gloom he finds it peopled with memories of his neglected wife, his pale shadow of a father, his icily glamorous mother and Alexander, the son she so jealously loved, killed in the First World War.

With only his ill-tempered alcoholic gardener left to attend to him, Mr Prendergast is content to pass his days in such a ghostly company. Until young Diarmid arrives, keen-eyed and carrot-haired, to disperse the gathering darkness with curiosity, and the promise of friendship.

'Assured and skilful' Sunday Times. [Google Books]