Said the Dead

by Doireann Ní Ghríofa

From the author of A Ghost in the Throat , an unforgettable book - both history and ghost story - that will leave you gasping by its final page.

In the city of Cork, a derelict Victorian mental hospital is being converted into modern apartments. One passerby has always flinched as she passes the place. Had her birth occurred in another decade, she too might have lived within those walls. Now, she notices a FOR SALE. It is the first of many signs. Following them, she finds herself drawn into an irresistible river of forgotten voices, those of the women who knew this place insistent, vivid and true. They murmur from archives and old records; they whisper from stairwells and walls. Among them - and in one figure in particular -- she may find meaning, solace, rage; her own salvation, perhaps, or her own vanishing?

A work of sublime intensity and tenderness, Said the Dead breaks the boundaries between worlds -- past and present, imagined and real -- to make something lasting and an experience full of danger, full of love and full of truth.

Genres: Fiction, Ireland, Adult

332 pages, Hardcover

Expected publication May 21, 2026

About the author

Doireann Ní Ghríofa is a ​bilingual ​writer​,​ devoted to exploring how the past makes itself felt within the present. ‘​​A Ghost in the Throat’ finds an 18th century poet haunting a young mother, leading her through visions of blood, milk, lust, and murder. Written on the roof of a multi-storey car park in Ireland, it went on to be described as “powerful” (New York Times), “captivatingly original” (The Guardian), and a “masterpiece” (Sunday Business Post). ​'A Ghost in the Throat’ won the James Tait Black Prize and was voted overall Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards, while the US edition was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and a New York Times Notable Book of 2021. It is to appear in 15 further languages worldwide.
Doireann is also the author of six critically-acclaimed books of poetry, each a deepening exploration of birth, death, desire, and domesticity. Awards for her writing include a Lannan Literary Fellowship (USA), the Ostana Prize (Italy), the James Tait Black Prize (Scotland), a Seamus Heaney Fellowship, and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature​, among others.

Reviews

[Kai Spellmeier]

'She read and read, because she had woken these voices, and to stop reading would silence them.'

Original, a novel no one could've written but this incredible author. Yet my fascination didn't always trump my impatience and at times I had to force myself ahead when I wished to be simply compelled.

[Artemisia · Rating 5 out of 5]

In November 2025 I lived in Cork City thanks to a booksellers’ exchange programme. The bedroom of my apartment had a window overlooking Fitzgerald Park and the hill beyond the River Lee. Every morning, as I woke up, I wondered what that large red-brick building stretching out before me might be: I could see the collapsed roof, windows opening onto an empty sky, trees growing inside. Only a few weeks later did I discover that it was the Good Shepherd’s Convent, a former Magdalene laundry, purchased by Cork City Council and slated for conversion into student accommodation. I know it is a mistake to think this way, but somehow the derelict convent transformed itself in my mind into the asylum that Doireann Ní Ghríofa chose to write about in her new book, a place that seems to share the same past and the same future. And it was there that the author took me, on one of my last days in Cork, allowing me to look at it through a gate and through her voice.

Because of a mix-up in the mail, the Reader — both protagonist and narrative device of the book — begins to receive letters not addressed to her. Her stubborn search leads her to consult the old records of the local asylum, where she repeatedly encounters the name of Dr Lucia Strongman, the only woman physician. Through her, the voices of the patients are released and take possession of the book, passing through the reader with memories, pain, and healing. For this is a book about healing: the only cure made possible when the past returns and makes itself present again. It is a book written by someone who believes that ghosts can be glitches in time, presences we can still encounter in the places they once inhabited.

Said the Dead is a sublime book, permeated by its author’s sensitivity and extraordinary empathy. It is also a nocturnal book, of births and deaths, and, as in A Ghost in the Throat, these pages too are a “female text”: the eyes of its women look back at us from Victorian photographs, made hazy and fantastical by the slow decay of paper.

[LindeFee · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

Doireann Ní Ghríofa writes like nobody else. I devoured A Ghost in the Throat a few years ago, and Said the Dead has the same completely engrossing effect.
Her at-times archaic register is perfect for the historical narrative and adds gravitas to contemporary scenes. The way she blends memoir with history, herself with others, fictitious writing with archival records is mesmerising. The ‘Reader’ moves through the records left behind by women who spent time in Cork’s insane asylum, becoming a reader of their lives much as we become readers of hers. This dynamic is deepened further by the doctor/patient relationship, which brings the casebooks into existence in the first place, but also becomes a narrative device which turns the ‘reader’ herself into a patient.
The layers of intertextuality and meta-readership make the persistent themes of mental illness, trauma, and our history inescapable, and continually remind us of the similarities with these women we carry within our own psyches. Ultimately, we ourselves are patients, doctors, readers, writers.

I was very lucky to get my hands on a proof of this book 🙌🏻

[Contrary Reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yes it includes me!

This will make complete sense when you have read this one. The voices this brings alive. The many threats to women’s’ power and sovereignty. To be alive in Ireland over 100 years ago. The fight for independence. The shadow of ww1. The sheer fragility of it all.

Magnificent

[nicky]

ALMOST NEVER BEEN MORE EXCITED FOR A RELEASE ANNOUNCEMENT !