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Country
Published to ravishing acclaim in the UK, a fierce and suspenseful reimagining of Homer’s Iliad set in mid-1990s Northern Ireland—a heart pounding tale of honor and revenge that “explodes with verbal invention, rapid juxtaposition, brutality and fun” (Times Literary Supplement).
Northern Ireland, 1996.
After twenty-five years of vicious conflict, the IRA and the British have agreed to an uneasy ceasefire as a first step towards lasting peace. But, faced with the prospect that decades of savage violence and loss have led only to smiles and handshakes, those on the ground in the border country question whether it really is time to pull back—or quite the opposite.
When an IRA man’s wife turns informer, he and his brother gather their comrades for an assault on the local army base. But old grudges boil over, and the squad's feared sniper, Achill, refuses to risk his life to defend another man’s pride. As the gang plots without him, the British SAS are sent to crush the rogue terror cell before it can wreck the fragile truce and drag the region back to the darkest days of the Troubles. Meanwhile, Achill’s young protégé grabs his chance to join the fray in his place…
Inspired by the oldest war story of them all, Michael Hughes’s virtuoso novel explores the brutal glory of armed conflict, the cost of Ireland’s most uncivil war, and the bitter tragedy of those on both sides who offer their lives to defend the dream of country.
Northern Ireland, 1996.
After twenty-five years of vicious conflict, the IRA and the British have agreed to an uneasy ceasefire as a first step towards lasting peace. But, faced with the prospect that decades of savage violence and loss have led only to smiles and handshakes, those on the ground in the border country question whether it really is time to pull back—or quite the opposite.
When an IRA man’s wife turns informer, he and his brother gather their comrades for an assault on the local army base. But old grudges boil over, and the squad's feared sniper, Achill, refuses to risk his life to defend another man’s pride. As the gang plots without him, the British SAS are sent to crush the rogue terror cell before it can wreck the fragile truce and drag the region back to the darkest days of the Troubles. Meanwhile, Achill’s young protégé grabs his chance to join the fray in his place…
Inspired by the oldest war story of them all, Michael Hughes’s virtuoso novel explores the brutal glory of armed conflict, the cost of Ireland’s most uncivil war, and the bitter tragedy of those on both sides who offer their lives to defend the dream of country.
314 pages, Kindle Edition
First published July 26, 2018
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About the author
Michael Hughes
2 books4 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Michael Edward Hughes grew up in a small town in Northern Ireland. A graduate of Oxford, he also trained in theatre at the Jacques Lecoq School in Paris. He has worked for many years as an actor under the professional name Michael Colgan, and he also teaches creative writing. He lives in London with his wife, the acclaimed historian Tiffany Watt Smith, and their two children.
(Source: HarperCollins Publishers)
Michael Edward Hughes grew up in a small town in Northern Ireland. A graduate of Oxford, he also trained in theatre at the Jacques Lecoq School in Paris. He has worked for many years as an actor under the professional name Michael Colgan, and he also teaches creative writing. He lives in London with his wife, the acclaimed historian Tiffany Watt Smith, and their two children.
(Source: HarperCollins Publishers)
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September 28, 2023
Fury. Pure Fury. The blood was up. Lost the head completely.Country is a wildly successful reimagining of The Iliad, set in the wild west of the 1990s border between Ireland and Northern Ireland. And despite the vast number of years between the tales, it does not seem that the species has advanced all that far.
=====================================
Death looks like glory to a young man. Get a few more years on you, and glory starts looking a lot like death.
Michael Hughes - image from RTE
Peace talks are afoot and the suits in charge are eager for there to be relative calm to keep the talks going. Shane Campbell, aka Pig, the head of an IRA squad near the border, has other plans. Gets it into his porcine head that one big operation can not only scuttle the talks, but set Ireland on the path to unification. And, oh yeah, his brother Brian (aka Dog, or Menelaus to Homer) is royally pissed that his wife (Nellie, an aka for Helen) has taken up with a Brit. And if you think that Brit might, just might be nicknamed Paris, then you’ve got the drift.
Of course, it is a bit of a challenge going to battle if your best fighter, unimaginatively named Achill, decides the boss is a horses’ arse, and why should he risk his life killing anyone for the sake of the Campbell family ego?
It is rather remarkable how well the story, actions, and characters line up with the original material, and yet, for the most part, it goes down as smooth as Guinness on tap. Henry, as Hector did, will come in for a bad end, and the gods who never manage to soil their togas while playing games with the actual mortal combatants, are nicely represented by the upper management on all sides. The beached ships of the original have become a pub referred to here as The Ships. The British base has been twisted into being called “Illiam,” definitely a stretch. There are many more such, most working well, but I will leave you the fun of sussing them out yourself.
My original idea was to call the novel Fury. It’s the opening word of the first chapter, and chosen quite deliberately. The first word of the Iliad, the Trojan War epic that gives my novel its structure, is an ancient Greek equivalent, though often translated as "wrath" rather than "anger", because the word in question is normally used only of the gods.One of the many great strengths of Country is the language. Hughes is native to the border area of which he writes, and the patois he sends through his characters like a Celtic god resounds with the rhythm and vocabulary of a place well known. Ok, really I am taking the word of others on this, having no great exposure (other than one relation by marriage) to Irish who lack the add-on of “-American”, despite my significantly green DNA. But try this, pick out a few passages and read them aloud, (most are brief, but there are a few scenes in which a character goes on for a bit, so you have some nice choices here) putting on your best imagined Irish accent. Or maybe try to picture Liam Neeson or Brendan Gleeson or (insert your favorite Irish thespian here) holding forth. There is music, and cadence, and magic in the words. This is not just something for which the Irish are noted, and thus is inevitable in a book about Ireland written by an Irishman, but something that further strengthens the bonds of Country to its literary sire, as The Iliad is written in a meter associated with chanting. Hughes’ stage experience no doubt informed his appreciation for rhythm, and enhanced the theatricality of his scenes.
But when I mentioned it to my editor, he shook his head. ‘The Brad Pitt film,’ he said, and of course he was right. Search for that title on Amazon, and the movie will always come up first. Unnecessary confusion. They’ll go off and buy something else. I probably would too. Back to square one. - from the RTE piece
"Growing up it's a bit like a Western," says the author of his own Troubles experiences. "You hear about people getting shot, but it's all a bit clean-cut if you don't actually witness it. There's no clean, 'nice' way of killing someone, whether it's by a bomb or a bullet."…Hughes returned to The Iliad as his 'way into' to writing about war and the Troubles."I realised I needed to write about men at war and my way of dealing with that was to try and read my way into it," he explains. The more he read the more he discovered uncanny parallels between the tail-end of the British/Irish armed conflict in 1990s Ulster and Homer's depiction of the Trojan war's twilight years. "I'd read The Iliad for the first time after I left university. One of the things I realised when I started re-reading is that there are a number of ceasefires in it. Then something happens and they have to decide if that breaks the truce, or if it gives them the chance to just pack up and walk away from it. That seemed to fit perfectly with the dynamics of Northern Ireland in mid-90s. - from the Irish Times interviewNot so lovely, yet painfully effective, is Hughes’ portrayal of violence. This Homeric song has plenty of screaming and graphic unpleasantness, lest anyone forget that war is a bloody horror. And not only the living are horribly violated, as Hector could attest. Betrayal is also a participation sport, all sides being equally matched in their willingness to screw each other for perceived personal or political gain, all in the warpaint of honor and revenge.
There are scenes that leave lasting impressions. Achill dreams of death on his tail and wakes to see a terrifying image. The wake for Pat (Patroclus) is memorable in diverse ways. Another, that made me laugh in joyful recognition was when a woman named Big Sheila stands in for the actions of a goddess in the original. In an oddly humorous way, Pig’s offerings to Achill in attempting to bribe him into returning to the conflict sounded less like an ancient Greek offering of livestock than shopping list for the local mall.
Lest anyone forget, the core emotion here is FURY. I read a dead-tree-and-ink version, so did not have a convenient way to check, but I imagine the number of times the word is used to be considerable. Those reading an e-book might offer up a count. There is a lot to be furious about.
Country is not a book that would be high on the #MeToo reading list. While there are some female characters with agency, most of the women are essentially chattel, objects to be stolen or traded, used and discarded, as it was in Homer’s version. IRA sorts round up local females as a kind of ad hoc harem, while the Brits provide abortions for desperate Irish lasses in return for the women turning informer. On second thought, it might be on the #MeToo TBR as an example of the worst sorts of behavior. I am not certain how much the treatment of women in the real world of 1990’s Irish borderlands mimicked Hughes’s portrayal.
Country is Michael Hughes’ second novel, well, second published novel. There are a couple filling file space at home. His first published novel, The Countenance Divine (2016), was a sprawling tale, spread over several centuries, involving the millennium bug, spiritual experiences and John Milton. He studied acting in Paris and has worked for some years under the name Michael Colgan.
Everything old is new again. While the Iliad has seen plenty of reimaginings, Country may be one of the treatments that hues closest to the original. And yet it is totally Irish, totally contemporary. Only rarely will anything make you say to yourself, now I wonder where that came from. A gripping, engaging read that will have you turning pages at a frenetic pace, Country is enchanting in a very dark way, while also offering up the truth that people have not really changed all that much in the years since Homer. It’s enough to make anyone absolutely, frothingly, violently furious.
There was far too much at stake in the talks for a wee skirmish to bring it all down. The Three Monkeys was the word. Besides, most in the place took no real interest, beyond what they saw on the news. Oh, there’d be something at the tail end of a bulletin, reports of shots being fired in a certain area, but that was so much blah blah blah to these people. You wouldn’t even take it in, let alone wonder what it was.
And it wasn’t that the reporters were in on it, or very few of them. No, there was very little learning went on, though the odd thing would have to be spiked. It was the papers themselves, the higher-ups in the TV and radio. They lived here too, and they all wanted the ceasefire back in place. Good for business, good for families, gives everybody a nice warm glow, spend their money, keep the ads coming in. They were quite happy to tune out a bit of inconvenient unpleasantness, as long as it was down the country and out of the way. Nothing was ever said. Nothing needed to be. Wink wink nudge nudge say no more.
Review first posted – September 27, 2019
Publication Date
=====UK – 7/26/18
=====USA - 10/1/2019 – Custom House
=============================EXTRA STUFF
The author’s Twitter page
Interviews
=====The Irish News - Co Armagh author Michael Hughes on new Troubles novel Country - by David Roy
===== The Sunday Times - Why novelist Michael Hughes is finally feeling epic
Items of Interest
=====Cliff Notes for The Iliad
=====Gutenberg - The Iliad free download
=====RTE - Keep her Country - Michael Hughes on his new novel
January 1, 2021
this story is the ‘iliad’ retold as irish history and its such a niche concept that it feels like it was written specifically for me. which is probably why i really enjoyed this.
although i prefer the original story, i was quite fascinated by how perfectly the setting of northern ireland fit for this, but i guess one could argue that all wars are similar. i just found it so satisfying how easily transferable the plot was.
i know some readers will be put off by the writing style, as the disjointed feel takes some time to get used to, but at its core, this is a contemporary story true to its classic origins.
↠ 4 stars
although i prefer the original story, i was quite fascinated by how perfectly the setting of northern ireland fit for this, but i guess one could argue that all wars are similar. i just found it so satisfying how easily transferable the plot was.
i know some readers will be put off by the writing style, as the disjointed feel takes some time to get used to, but at its core, this is a contemporary story true to its classic origins.
↠ 4 stars
July 7, 2019
Where was this book when I was in school? Homer & I had a rocky relationship & by the time I graduated, we were barely on speaking terms. With this retelling of The Iliad, Michael Hughes takes the legendary poet’s themes & characters & plunks them down in 1996 Northern Ireland, just after the signing of the peace accord.
Like many great tales, it all begins with a woman. Nellie is a young Catholic who is part of a new generation. Tired of grinding poverty & endless violence, they yearn for a life beyond “the Troubles”. So when she’s offered money to inform on her IRA husband & his crew, she sees it as her ticket to a new life in London & grabs it with both hands.
Think of her as a modern Helen which means her husband Brian Campbell is this version’s Menelaus. Brian is part of a group led by his brother Shane (think Agamemnon) & follows him with unquestioning loyalty. So when they learn Nell is a tout, they plot to blow up a nearby English army post in retaliation. It’s not just what they do, it’s a matter of family pride. But they’ll need the help of sniper Liam “Achill” O’Brien to guarantee success (no points for recognizing him as our Achilles).
Liam is more than a competent marksman. He’s a legend in these parts & the mere whisper of his name is the stuff of nightmares for English soldiers. He’s been picking them off for years & truth be told, he’s getting a little tired of the whole damn mess. If the peace accord holds, he’ll be out of a job & lately he’s been thinking of returning home to the island of Achill. Now he’s being asked to continue the slaughter just to salvage a man’s pride.
In alternate chapters we’re introduced to Henry, an aging English combat veteran who has no time for the hopeful blather being spewed by politicians. He embodies Homer’s Hector, a soldier addicted to the glory of war at the expense of everyone else in his life. His days on active duty are numbered & taking out Liam would guarantee his legacy.
And so the stage is set. It’s inevitable there will be a mighty clash between these characters & many others. The contemporary setting makes this powerful story more relatable & N. Ireland in particular is the perfect location to explore Homer’s classic themes of honour, pride, fate, loyalty & mortality. Instead of dealing with the big picture, the author uses a small band of characters to represent the brutal effect of decades of war. This narrow focus personalizes the Troubles, helping us understand how they’ve inherited so much bitterness & hatred.
It’s clear from the start we’re in for a bloody ending but much of the book is more dialogue than action. It’s written in Irish vernacular & although I found this difficult to understand at times (my failing, not the author’s) it lends authenticity to the narrative.
It’s written as if someone is telling you a story while you share a pint, a story about people who can’t escape their circumstances or even imagine a different life. For them fighting is like breathing & as in the original tale, there are few winners here. It’s an engrossing read & I can’t help but think if I’d had this version while in school I’d have got a better grade.
Like many great tales, it all begins with a woman. Nellie is a young Catholic who is part of a new generation. Tired of grinding poverty & endless violence, they yearn for a life beyond “the Troubles”. So when she’s offered money to inform on her IRA husband & his crew, she sees it as her ticket to a new life in London & grabs it with both hands.
Think of her as a modern Helen which means her husband Brian Campbell is this version’s Menelaus. Brian is part of a group led by his brother Shane (think Agamemnon) & follows him with unquestioning loyalty. So when they learn Nell is a tout, they plot to blow up a nearby English army post in retaliation. It’s not just what they do, it’s a matter of family pride. But they’ll need the help of sniper Liam “Achill” O’Brien to guarantee success (no points for recognizing him as our Achilles).
Liam is more than a competent marksman. He’s a legend in these parts & the mere whisper of his name is the stuff of nightmares for English soldiers. He’s been picking them off for years & truth be told, he’s getting a little tired of the whole damn mess. If the peace accord holds, he’ll be out of a job & lately he’s been thinking of returning home to the island of Achill. Now he’s being asked to continue the slaughter just to salvage a man’s pride.
In alternate chapters we’re introduced to Henry, an aging English combat veteran who has no time for the hopeful blather being spewed by politicians. He embodies Homer’s Hector, a soldier addicted to the glory of war at the expense of everyone else in his life. His days on active duty are numbered & taking out Liam would guarantee his legacy.
And so the stage is set. It’s inevitable there will be a mighty clash between these characters & many others. The contemporary setting makes this powerful story more relatable & N. Ireland in particular is the perfect location to explore Homer’s classic themes of honour, pride, fate, loyalty & mortality. Instead of dealing with the big picture, the author uses a small band of characters to represent the brutal effect of decades of war. This narrow focus personalizes the Troubles, helping us understand how they’ve inherited so much bitterness & hatred.
It’s clear from the start we’re in for a bloody ending but much of the book is more dialogue than action. It’s written in Irish vernacular & although I found this difficult to understand at times (my failing, not the author’s) it lends authenticity to the narrative.
It’s written as if someone is telling you a story while you share a pint, a story about people who can’t escape their circumstances or even imagine a different life. For them fighting is like breathing & as in the original tale, there are few winners here. It’s an engrossing read & I can’t help but think if I’d had this version while in school I’d have got a better grade.
June 20, 2019
Country is the most literal Iliad retelling I’ve ever read, which came as a surprise given that its premise is worlds away from Ancient Greece. Michael Hughes’s interpretation is set in 1990s Northern Ireland, twenty-five years into the conflict known as the Troubles, and yet despite the wildly different setting it hits all the same beats as Homer’s tale, each scene and character a perfect mirror to the original story, and easy to identify with names like Achill (Achilles), Nellie (Helen), Henry (Hector), and Pat (Patroclus).
This level of faithfulness was a double-edged sword for me: it led to moments of brilliance and moments that were a little too on the nose. Mostly brilliance, so let's start there: the decision to adapt the Iliad to the Troubles was an inspired one, a pairing linked by the tragedy of lives lost needlessly to a cause whose rhetoric is shrouded in talk of honor, but whose reality is starker and more senseless.
This passage in particular as the Hector figure, a war-weary SAS man, is on the verge of death called to mind a passage from the Iliad that hits home its driving thematic conceit:
- Michael Hughes, Country
- Homer, The Iliad, translated by Robert Fagles
Used as a pawn by gods in one case and government and/or paramilitary leaders in the other, the individual lives affected amidst the brutality are the focus of both texts, and Hughes capitalizes on the opportunity to tell this story with the abject tragedy it deserves.
And overarching themes aside, the level of detail here is just delightful for Homer fans: the SAS base is called Illiam because the W fell off the William Castle sign; the IRA pub is referred to as 'The Ships' in reference to the Greeks' camp outside the walls of Troy.
However, there were some bits that didn’t translate perfectly: Achill’s widely accepted irreplaceability felt shoehorned in - the role of the individual in modern-day warfare just isn’t perfectly equitable with ancient battle. And a few scenes felt like they were only there in the name of keeping the structure as close to the Iliad as possible - I wouldn't have minded, for example, the omission of a few scenes like the funeral games (which went into a level of detail that was admirably authentic but frankly excessive) in favor of adding a bit more heft to the weightier scenes like Achill's confrontation with the Priam character.
I was very cognizant as I was reading that this wasn’t going to be an easy book to recommend; it’s not, so to speak, baby’s first Troubles book. You don’t exactly need a PhD in Irish History to be able to follow this, but I do want to be clear that almost none of the dialect (which Hughes renders beautifully) or cultural references are explained or contextualized (read Say Nothing first!). I'd actually stress that an interest in the Iliad is much less essential to get something out of this than knowing a bit about the Troubles. Still, for the right reader this is a sharp and cleverly written retelling whose literality is an asset more often than not. Though it did strike me that I may, ironically, be a bit too familiar with the Iliad to be this book's ideal reader.
This level of faithfulness was a double-edged sword for me: it led to moments of brilliance and moments that were a little too on the nose. Mostly brilliance, so let's start there: the decision to adapt the Iliad to the Troubles was an inspired one, a pairing linked by the tragedy of lives lost needlessly to a cause whose rhetoric is shrouded in talk of honor, but whose reality is starker and more senseless.
This passage in particular as the Hector figure, a war-weary SAS man, is on the verge of death called to mind a passage from the Iliad that hits home its driving thematic conceit:
"The fucking spooks, the fucking politicians. Moving the pieces on the board, doling out life or death with a flick of the wrist. Not one of them was in harm's way. Not one of them could ever die this death. He was charged to defend their will, their country's honour, but all he could ever defend was his own life. It wasn't their blood on the road. It never would be. They didn't understand.
No. They understood. They didn't care."
- Michael Hughes, Country
"So the immortals spun our lives that we, we wretched men
live on to bear such torments—the gods live free of sorrows."
- Homer, The Iliad, translated by Robert Fagles
Used as a pawn by gods in one case and government and/or paramilitary leaders in the other, the individual lives affected amidst the brutality are the focus of both texts, and Hughes capitalizes on the opportunity to tell this story with the abject tragedy it deserves.
And overarching themes aside, the level of detail here is just delightful for Homer fans: the SAS base is called Illiam because the W fell off the William Castle sign; the IRA pub is referred to as 'The Ships' in reference to the Greeks' camp outside the walls of Troy.
However, there were some bits that didn’t translate perfectly: Achill’s widely accepted irreplaceability felt shoehorned in - the role of the individual in modern-day warfare just isn’t perfectly equitable with ancient battle. And a few scenes felt like they were only there in the name of keeping the structure as close to the Iliad as possible - I wouldn't have minded, for example, the omission of a few scenes like the funeral games (which went into a level of detail that was admirably authentic but frankly excessive) in favor of adding a bit more heft to the weightier scenes like Achill's confrontation with the Priam character.
I was very cognizant as I was reading that this wasn’t going to be an easy book to recommend; it’s not, so to speak, baby’s first Troubles book. You don’t exactly need a PhD in Irish History to be able to follow this, but I do want to be clear that almost none of the dialect (which Hughes renders beautifully) or cultural references are explained or contextualized (read Say Nothing first!). I'd actually stress that an interest in the Iliad is much less essential to get something out of this than knowing a bit about the Troubles. Still, for the right reader this is a sharp and cleverly written retelling whose literality is an asset more often than not. Though it did strike me that I may, ironically, be a bit too familiar with the Iliad to be this book's ideal reader.
October 13, 2020
“What was the start of it? The whole wrecking match, that sent so many strong souls roaring down to hell, dogs chewing up the guts ground into the road, birds pecking at the splattered bits of their brains. The way London wanted it to go. The way it always is.”
“Someday, they knew, the string would be pulled to stop at all. Not yet. When all the pieces were in place. The higher-ups would settle it, find the middle course. Until then, we live and die here below. One nod of the head, one tip of the scales. The way it always was. The way it has to be.”
This book is based on Homer’s Iliad, but I read that book so long ago that I don’t remember the details. I made no attempt to “compare and contrast” the two books. This book is completely enjoyable even if you have never read the Iliad, based on a combination of the vivid (and profane) language and the compelling characters. Set in the 1990s, this book presents the conflict between the IRA and the British as a war, a gang fight and a Gunfight at the O. K. Coral. War is just a pointless mess, no matter the century. The motivations of the characters included pride, vengeance, patriotism and a desire to protect the defenseless, among other things. Women don’t play much of a role here. There is an informer, a whiny wife and a few who are passed around as war prizes.
I listened to the audiobook narrated by the author. That is usually a bad idea, but this author did an excellent job (although it took me a while to get used to the Irish accent). After I finished the book I discovered that the author is also an actor. That probably explains his skill as a narrator. I would be happy to read anything else he writes.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.
“Someday, they knew, the string would be pulled to stop at all. Not yet. When all the pieces were in place. The higher-ups would settle it, find the middle course. Until then, we live and die here below. One nod of the head, one tip of the scales. The way it always was. The way it has to be.”
This book is based on Homer’s Iliad, but I read that book so long ago that I don’t remember the details. I made no attempt to “compare and contrast” the two books. This book is completely enjoyable even if you have never read the Iliad, based on a combination of the vivid (and profane) language and the compelling characters. Set in the 1990s, this book presents the conflict between the IRA and the British as a war, a gang fight and a Gunfight at the O. K. Coral. War is just a pointless mess, no matter the century. The motivations of the characters included pride, vengeance, patriotism and a desire to protect the defenseless, among other things. Women don’t play much of a role here. There is an informer, a whiny wife and a few who are passed around as war prizes.
I listened to the audiobook narrated by the author. That is usually a bad idea, but this author did an excellent job (although it took me a while to get used to the Irish accent). After I finished the book I discovered that the author is also an actor. That probably explains his skill as a narrator. I would be happy to read anything else he writes.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.
August 24, 2019
Of all the things I might have expected from a retelling of the Iliad set during the Troubles, (the British/Irish conflict over Northern Ireland of late 20th Century), a genuine faithfulness to the original wasn't one of them. It’s in the sound and feel and content of the speeches, the mirroring of scenes and motivations, the names, and most of all in the deliberate savaging of notions of honour in war. A clear two fingers to lofty ideals and righteousness, this is about ambition and power. Heroes are anything but, and in this version women get their own opportunity to demonstrate humanity’s innate self-interest. It’s a tragedy perpetuated by individuals desperate for personal gain, all prettied up in the rhetoric of necessity. The language is fitting, harsh and vernacular, with a grim brutality throughout. There’s no holding back on reality here, suspicion and violence as the norm. The pointed connections between the two texts are illustrative, not only are we acting out the same stories, we’re still not learning the right lessons.
ARC via Edelweiss
ARC via Edelweiss
October 29, 2018
This is the second new Iliad retelling I’ve read in recent months, the other being Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls. That kept the traditional setting and refocused the narrative on Briseis. By contrast, ‘Country’ transposes the action to the Irish border in 1996, yet keeps the narrative so close to Homer that it almost reads like a new translation. As a result, I found myself enjoying it more than The Silence of the Girls. While Barker’s novel is involving, it is perhaps more of a re-examination than a retelling. That is not a criticism, as putting women’s suffering into the foreground is a powerful and thought-provoking literary endeavour. ‘Country’, however, really captures the rhythms of Homer. (In translation, that is, as I don’t know any ancient Greek.) From the opening lines, it tempts you to read aloud:
Magnificent, no? And Hughes sustains that all the way through. The whole Iliad, with IRA men as Greeks, the British army as Trojans, and politicians as the divine pantheon who ultimately control events. The role of Nellie, NI’s very own Helen, is recounted in detail, yet ultimately this is a conflict over a country. A conflict over pride and over stories, sustained through generations. There may be cars and guns, but the emotional core of war appears unchanged over millennia. A speech from Achill after the embassy tries to persuade him to return to war:
The whole novel is a stunning achievement, full of pathos and sly humour. I was blown away by it. The most meaningful modern twist on the Iliad that I’ve found to date.
Fury. Pure fury. The blood was up. Lost the head completely.
Achill, the man from the west. The best sniper the IRA ever seen. All called him Achill, but his name was plain Liam O’Brien. After the da, Big Liam O’Brien, who came out of Achill Island and bore the name before him. So the son was called Achill in his turn, though he was born and reared in Castlebar and he’d never set foot in the place, for the da always said it was a fearful hole.
What was the start of it? The whole wrecking match, that sent so many strong souls roaring down to hell, dogs chewing up the guts ground into the road, birds pecking at the splattered bits of their brains. The way London wanted it to go. The way it always is.
Magnificent, no? And Hughes sustains that all the way through. The whole Iliad, with IRA men as Greeks, the British army as Trojans, and politicians as the divine pantheon who ultimately control events. The role of Nellie, NI’s very own Helen, is recounted in detail, yet ultimately this is a conflict over a country. A conflict over pride and over stories, sustained through generations. There may be cars and guns, but the emotional core of war appears unchanged over millennia. A speech from Achill after the embassy tries to persuade him to return to war:
"Listen now to what I’m going to tell you.
There are no pockets in a shroud. Do you hear me? You can be as rich as Croesus, and lose every red cent, or have it took off you, and you can always make it back again, if you’re smart, or just go out and take it, if you’re a hard man. But once you lose your life, you can’t get that back. You hear me? You can’t get that back. I’ll say it one more time. You can’t get that back.
I’ve always known that if I stayed with the Ra, sooner or later it would be the end of me. I’ve known it from the day I took the oath. But I stuck with it, for I knew I’d be remembered for what I’d done. I’d be a legend for what I’d done.
But lately I’ve had a bit of time to think, and now I can see there’s another side to that story. I don’t have to stay. I can go home, and live a long comfortable life. Do you see what I’m saying? Nobody with know or care who the fuck I am, but I’ll die of old age, the way a man should, surrounded by his family, and his wealth, in his own home place. And right now, at this time of life, that suits me just fine.
Death looks like glory to a young man. Get a few more years on you, and glory starts to look a lot like death.
The whole novel is a stunning achievement, full of pathos and sly humour. I was blown away by it. The most meaningful modern twist on the Iliad that I’ve found to date.
March 26, 2022
The whole time I listened to this audiobook, I kept thinking how weird it was. Afterward, I took a closer look at what the heck this book was going for and I found out it was Michael Hughes' retelling of The Iliad, framed by the Troubles in Northern Ireland.
Well jeez, now I get it!!! Long diatribes about whether or not to eat before going into battle make more sense. Using *very* young girls as bartering chips and spoils of war is one of the major plot points. Again, makes sense in the context of The Iliad - but I desperately hope that in 1996 Ireland, that wasn't normally going on.
So where's the Irish angle come in? Imagine a very small town in the middle of the Northern Irish boonies. Everybody knows everybody else. There's the barflies, the old codgers who think they know everything, the guy who runs the town, the local badass, the floozie(s). We spend the book as a fly on the wall, listening as these secret members of the IRA plot against the English and each other, as simmering rivalries and betrayals disrupt the whole operation.
It was... interesting, but admittedly not my thing. I would have liked this 100% more if it wasn't trying so hard to be a Greek Tragedy. The Troubles were tragic enough.
Well jeez, now I get it!!! Long diatribes about whether or not to eat before going into battle make more sense. Using *very* young girls as bartering chips and spoils of war is one of the major plot points. Again, makes sense in the context of The Iliad - but I desperately hope that in 1996 Ireland, that wasn't normally going on.
So where's the Irish angle come in? Imagine a very small town in the middle of the Northern Irish boonies. Everybody knows everybody else. There's the barflies, the old codgers who think they know everything, the guy who runs the town, the local badass, the floozie(s). We spend the book as a fly on the wall, listening as these secret members of the IRA plot against the English and each other, as simmering rivalries and betrayals disrupt the whole operation.
It was... interesting, but admittedly not my thing. I would have liked this 100% more if it wasn't trying so hard to be a Greek Tragedy. The Troubles were tragic enough.
July 29, 2018
Absolutely brilliant. This retelling of The Iliad brings home the timelessness of men and women in conflict. I have several translations of The Iliad on my shelf, this will go next to them. There are a few moments where it's a bit of a stretch to fit certain moments of Homer into Northern Ireland, but the author manages to pull them off. Highly recommended.
October 17, 2025
At the fag end of the Troubles, a renegade band of hardcore IRA soldiers hunker down for one final pas-de-death with the British. Conceived as a retelling of The Iliad, the novel is weird on women, passed around here as prizes between the leader and soldiers, the only unusual use of Homer’s epic tragedy as a framework to capture that singular moment of seismic tension as the prospect of peace in Ireland shuddered into view. Hughes writes with vivid violence and skewers the mock-heroics of both sides in a keenly observed, nuanced examination of a momentous historical sea change.
September 27, 2020
Fury. Pure fury. The blood was up. Lost the head completely.~from Country by Michael Hughes
Hughes begins his story in the middle of a conflict between two members of an rogue IRA terrorist cell group.
Achill and Pig, the 'trigger man' who killed eight Brits and the Officer Commander of a terrorist cell, clash over a girl whose father wants her back home. She had willingly come to Achill and he won't give her up. Pig insists the teenager will return to her da.
Achill capitulates but throws in the towel. He knows it is his reputation that keep the Brits scared. Let them see what happens without him. He was done. He was going home.
And that was the start of it. A terrible business altogether...Wait now till you hear the rest.~from Country by Michael Hughes
A tenuous truce has brought temporary peace, but the cell group won't give up the fight. This time, they are sure they have the upper hand with inside information about British plans. Independence is theirs, if they have the heart for it.
The tale is violent, gritty, filled with passion and tears. It is an engrossing read, a timeless and compelling story.
I was attracted to the novel as a retelling of The Iliad, Homer's story of the falling out between Achilles and King Agamemnon during the Trojan War. It's been a very long time since I last read Homer. The plotline and themes are there to be found, but readers will enjoy this novel if you don't know Homer.
Hughes novel has the feel of the epic in the narrative voice, the high passions, the rhythm of the language.
I won an ARC from LibraryThing a year ago. After it didn't arrive, I contacted the publisher in the fall and they sent me the published edition.
It was worth waiting for.
Hughes begins his story in the middle of a conflict between two members of an rogue IRA terrorist cell group.
Achill and Pig, the 'trigger man' who killed eight Brits and the Officer Commander of a terrorist cell, clash over a girl whose father wants her back home. She had willingly come to Achill and he won't give her up. Pig insists the teenager will return to her da.
Achill capitulates but throws in the towel. He knows it is his reputation that keep the Brits scared. Let them see what happens without him. He was done. He was going home.
And that was the start of it. A terrible business altogether...Wait now till you hear the rest.~from Country by Michael Hughes
A tenuous truce has brought temporary peace, but the cell group won't give up the fight. This time, they are sure they have the upper hand with inside information about British plans. Independence is theirs, if they have the heart for it.
The tale is violent, gritty, filled with passion and tears. It is an engrossing read, a timeless and compelling story.
I was attracted to the novel as a retelling of The Iliad, Homer's story of the falling out between Achilles and King Agamemnon during the Trojan War. It's been a very long time since I last read Homer. The plotline and themes are there to be found, but readers will enjoy this novel if you don't know Homer.
Hughes novel has the feel of the epic in the narrative voice, the high passions, the rhythm of the language.
I won an ARC from LibraryThing a year ago. After it didn't arrive, I contacted the publisher in the fall and they sent me the published edition.
It was worth waiting for.
April 24, 2021
The Iliad as a story in Northern Ireland's The Troubles period? By far, this is the most original premise for a retelling I've ever seen. And how it fits! In spite of being set millennia later and in a land that has nothing to do with the Hellenic sphere, the story still manages to feel so faithful to Homer's epic and its characters & themes.
The writing is crisp and brief, to the point, no fluff and no extra fat. Chapters are very short, sometimes just a paragraph, and characters are dynamic and alive; all recognisable, too: Achill, Nellie, Theresa, Pig, Dog, Pat, Henry, Bernard, Ned, Crisis Cunningham... You'll know them all, if you've read The Iliad. I can only lament that it reads so fast because of the prose, and so ends too soon.
The writing is crisp and brief, to the point, no fluff and no extra fat. Chapters are very short, sometimes just a paragraph, and characters are dynamic and alive; all recognisable, too: Achill, Nellie, Theresa, Pig, Dog, Pat, Henry, Bernard, Ned, Crisis Cunningham... You'll know them all, if you've read The Iliad. I can only lament that it reads so fast because of the prose, and so ends too soon.
April 2, 2022
In the run up to the cease fire in Northern Ireland, the entrenched PIRA and British Army seek to find an end to the protracted war of attrition for once and for all.
A cleverly written novel, which works well on its own as well as a modern retelling of 'The Iliad'. Visceral and flowing with a poetic energy which fills the space, 'Country' deserves to be read.
A cleverly written novel, which works well on its own as well as a modern retelling of 'The Iliad'. Visceral and flowing with a poetic energy which fills the space, 'Country' deserves to be read.
September 28, 2024
LOVED IT. Read it in a day! Reads like a story someone is telling you in a pub - very apt for a retelling of the Iliad set in the Troubles. I love reading retellings of classics/myths and seeing how characters and plot lines can be transported to different eras. The Trojan war worked so well in 1990s Ireland. I really liked the style of prose, the violence was viscerally described, the characters well depicted (and for me it’s always fun to try and match the characters from the myth to the ones in the book - especially the lesser known ones, and i enjoy the way characters are renamed but with links to the originals.)
The oldest war story of all - Hughes uses it well to show how people can become trapped in a cycle of expectation, loyalty and violence, regardless of the time in history.
The oldest war story of all - Hughes uses it well to show how people can become trapped in a cycle of expectation, loyalty and violence, regardless of the time in history.
September 14, 2018
I've started listening to audiobooks in the car on my commute to the station, and I think Country was an excellent choice to begin this. Not only is the subject matter - a reimagining of the Illiad set in the corner country Ireland towards the end of the Troubles - fittingly oral, but in this version, read by the author, the story becomes luminous, immersive, beautiful - even when dealing with very ugly events.
Hughes has a rhythm, an air, that engages. Listening to him is like sitting by a camp fire, or in a courtyard or marketplace or a chief's fort long ago, hearing the beginning of story, before it would ever have been written down. "Listen" he says or "Now we're getting to it" or "Wait till you hear". Or the story veers off into a tale of the old days, of heroes and cruelties, or the life of some curious person tangential to the main narrative. While I'm sure this book reads well on the page, I think it's made to to be heard.
The episodic nature helps with that: I've found before with audiobooks that there's a risk of losing concentration, missing something vital, and leaving the story half done. Not here. The effect is almost holographic, building up the lives of the IRA squad, its enemies in the British base and the people of the "downland" - including spies, political bosses ("our friend, Mr Paul Bright"), the shady "higher ups" who are often invoked but never appear in person and victims.
The conflict in Ireland was seen - is seen - here in Britain as very polarised and indeed that is reflected here, with awful things done by one side to the other. But the book also reflects another story - a closeness, an interdependence, blind eyes turned by one faction to the goings-on of the other, Republicans passing intel back to the Brits to settle scores, tacit deals to spare those "higher-ups" from violence. These are small communities where everyone knows everyone else, whichever side they're on. Hughes draws a fascinating picture of this society, and layers it with references and analogies to the story of Troy, or the oldest tales of Ireland - other societies where warfare was, at one level, "heroic" - and we get the preposterous warrior boasts, the single combat, the looting of the dead, gifts of treasures, women and, above all perhaps, the drinking and feasting (the latter conveyed through fry-ups joyfully described and eaten in volume).
I'm at a disadvantage here because I have never read The Illiad (don't @ me) but even I can see some of the comparisons - those "higher-ups", the names, the centrality of a vanished wife to the story. They give it a point and a focus and demand attention. Is Hughes really saying that nothing has changed in attitudes in three thousand years? All the blood shed from the 1960s to the 1990s might suggest that. Is this a good way to understand the "men of violence" we were nightly warned of on TV? Their cause, rehearsed here, is familiar yet in this story it's overshadowed by the score-settling of the older Troy story. Is that fair?
I wasn't, in the end, sure whether the comparisons with Troy - beyond the similarities in outlook I've mentioned above - helped. Certainly, towards the end, there were parts of the story where what one might see as the need to stay close to the source, such as two combatants running three times around the walls, or close quarters fighting rather than the use of firearms over greater distances, seemed to constrain the story rather. But in many other places Hughes happily throws overboard Homer's narrative (even I can see that) so I think this is still him telling the story he wants to tell, not just following his source.
And if at times that makes the doings of these hard men, these soldiers, these heroes, look faintly ridiculous - well, think about that. Perhaps they were, both in the 20th century AD and the 10th BC.
One thing Hughes does do here is to give some voice to the women. Yes, many of the characters - the volunteers in the squad, the SAS, the police and the "Green Army" are men but women play some key roles and most of all, the Helen-figure, Nellie, plays an independent role, taking her own destiny in her hands, manipulating those who would use her and making the best she can of her circumstances. She speaks, here, and what she says matters.
All in all this is a startling, vivid and compelling story, very different from anything I'd read recently. I'd strongly recommend.
Hughes has a rhythm, an air, that engages. Listening to him is like sitting by a camp fire, or in a courtyard or marketplace or a chief's fort long ago, hearing the beginning of story, before it would ever have been written down. "Listen" he says or "Now we're getting to it" or "Wait till you hear". Or the story veers off into a tale of the old days, of heroes and cruelties, or the life of some curious person tangential to the main narrative. While I'm sure this book reads well on the page, I think it's made to to be heard.
The episodic nature helps with that: I've found before with audiobooks that there's a risk of losing concentration, missing something vital, and leaving the story half done. Not here. The effect is almost holographic, building up the lives of the IRA squad, its enemies in the British base and the people of the "downland" - including spies, political bosses ("our friend, Mr Paul Bright"), the shady "higher ups" who are often invoked but never appear in person and victims.
The conflict in Ireland was seen - is seen - here in Britain as very polarised and indeed that is reflected here, with awful things done by one side to the other. But the book also reflects another story - a closeness, an interdependence, blind eyes turned by one faction to the goings-on of the other, Republicans passing intel back to the Brits to settle scores, tacit deals to spare those "higher-ups" from violence. These are small communities where everyone knows everyone else, whichever side they're on. Hughes draws a fascinating picture of this society, and layers it with references and analogies to the story of Troy, or the oldest tales of Ireland - other societies where warfare was, at one level, "heroic" - and we get the preposterous warrior boasts, the single combat, the looting of the dead, gifts of treasures, women and, above all perhaps, the drinking and feasting (the latter conveyed through fry-ups joyfully described and eaten in volume).
I'm at a disadvantage here because I have never read The Illiad (don't @ me) but even I can see some of the comparisons - those "higher-ups", the names, the centrality of a vanished wife to the story. They give it a point and a focus and demand attention. Is Hughes really saying that nothing has changed in attitudes in three thousand years? All the blood shed from the 1960s to the 1990s might suggest that. Is this a good way to understand the "men of violence" we were nightly warned of on TV? Their cause, rehearsed here, is familiar yet in this story it's overshadowed by the score-settling of the older Troy story. Is that fair?
I wasn't, in the end, sure whether the comparisons with Troy - beyond the similarities in outlook I've mentioned above - helped. Certainly, towards the end, there were parts of the story where what one might see as the need to stay close to the source, such as two combatants running three times around the walls, or close quarters fighting rather than the use of firearms over greater distances, seemed to constrain the story rather. But in many other places Hughes happily throws overboard Homer's narrative (even I can see that) so I think this is still him telling the story he wants to tell, not just following his source.
And if at times that makes the doings of these hard men, these soldiers, these heroes, look faintly ridiculous - well, think about that. Perhaps they were, both in the 20th century AD and the 10th BC.
One thing Hughes does do here is to give some voice to the women. Yes, many of the characters - the volunteers in the squad, the SAS, the police and the "Green Army" are men but women play some key roles and most of all, the Helen-figure, Nellie, plays an independent role, taking her own destiny in her hands, manipulating those who would use her and making the best she can of her circumstances. She speaks, here, and what she says matters.
All in all this is a startling, vivid and compelling story, very different from anything I'd read recently. I'd strongly recommend.
April 5, 2022
4.25 stars
Trigger warnings:
Like Homer’s Iliad, which it is based upon, Country centers on the impact of a personal dispute on an armed conflict. It’s 1996 and a ceasefire is being negotiated between Britain and the IRA. The dispute, as in the Iliad, is over a girl—in this case the daughter of Crisis Cunningham, a protestant farmer in a Northern Irish village near the border.
The narrator of the novel is unnamed but appears to know all the players; their feelings and thoughts as well as their actions. The narrator might fairly be described as omniscient, since we get multiple viewpoints but all are framed by the narrator’s introductions and descriptions.
But the narrator’s voice is steeped in the vernacular of the setting, and in that way, the narrator does not come across as an impartial observer. He (I use the male pronoun because that was how the narrator read to me) has opinions that bracket the events in the novel and to some extent color the reader’s reactions to those same events and to the choices made by the characters.
There’s a gossipy quality to the narration, as if the narrator were sitting and drinking with us in a Northern Irish pub such as the one the characters frequent, eager to share anecdotes that show he’s in the loop. The narration is also humorous on occasion, as are the characters and sometimes even the goings-on.
To get back to the dispute, it appears to have sprung when Cunningham’s fourteen-year-old daughter ran away from home to take up with the leader of the local IRA cell, a man known as Pig. Pig had rented the land on which the squad plans its operations from Cunningham, but now Cunningham pleads for the return of his daughter. Pig refuses.
Cunningham then contacts a relative of his named Paul Bright, a local protestant politician with connections. Bright arranges for the water and power on the land the IRA squad is renting to be cut off and hints to the British security forces that the area’s IRA cell might be up to something.
Pig is indeed planning an operation, but the plan begins to fall apart when the local priest informs the squad of Bright’s doings and of Cunningham’s threats to reveal the cell’s location to the British. When the priest recommends that Pig return the girl to her father and apologize profusely, Pig loses his temper and—in front of the priest—insists that his men find him another young woman to take the place of Cunningham’s daughter.
The group’s most skilled sniper, a man named Achill, reminds Pig that the members of the cell avoid local entanglements while working on an operation. Achill cautions Pig to wait until after the operation has been carried out. A furious Pig suggests that Achill turn over his own young lover, Brigid, so that she can warm his bed instead.
Achill, who has an emotional attachment to Brigid, explodes. He reveals to his fellow foot soldiers that the operation originates not from the top, but from Pig’s wounded pride. Pig’s sister-in-law has left his brother, Dog, to inform on the IRA to the British, and Pig is out to avenge his family.
Pig does not back down, and Achill announces that he will allow Brigid to go to Pig—but that this will be his last action as a member of the squad. He will not fight under Pig any longer. Without Achill, the squad is considerably weakened and it’s questionable whether they can pull off the operation at all. But Pig digs in his heels and the fracture widens.
I can’t say too much about the plot of Country, because I don’t want to spoil the surprises. But the novel is an earthy, violent and tragicomic tale. Despite being firmly rooted in mid-1990s Northern Ireland, it retains most of the Iliad’s themes, including the notion of attaining glory through battlefield daring, the tragic flaws of unforgiving anger and wounded pride, and the inevitability of violence and loss as a result.
Unlike in Homer’s Iliad, though, Country has no heroes and the story does not reflect well on any of the characters. Pig is, of course, the self-serving villain, but a portion of his villainy stems from his ineptitude.
This is a partial review. The complete review can be found at Dear Author, here: https://dearauthor.com/book-reviews/r...
Trigger warnings:
Like Homer’s Iliad, which it is based upon, Country centers on the impact of a personal dispute on an armed conflict. It’s 1996 and a ceasefire is being negotiated between Britain and the IRA. The dispute, as in the Iliad, is over a girl—in this case the daughter of Crisis Cunningham, a protestant farmer in a Northern Irish village near the border.
The narrator of the novel is unnamed but appears to know all the players; their feelings and thoughts as well as their actions. The narrator might fairly be described as omniscient, since we get multiple viewpoints but all are framed by the narrator’s introductions and descriptions.
But the narrator’s voice is steeped in the vernacular of the setting, and in that way, the narrator does not come across as an impartial observer. He (I use the male pronoun because that was how the narrator read to me) has opinions that bracket the events in the novel and to some extent color the reader’s reactions to those same events and to the choices made by the characters.
There’s a gossipy quality to the narration, as if the narrator were sitting and drinking with us in a Northern Irish pub such as the one the characters frequent, eager to share anecdotes that show he’s in the loop. The narration is also humorous on occasion, as are the characters and sometimes even the goings-on.
To get back to the dispute, it appears to have sprung when Cunningham’s fourteen-year-old daughter ran away from home to take up with the leader of the local IRA cell, a man known as Pig. Pig had rented the land on which the squad plans its operations from Cunningham, but now Cunningham pleads for the return of his daughter. Pig refuses.
Cunningham then contacts a relative of his named Paul Bright, a local protestant politician with connections. Bright arranges for the water and power on the land the IRA squad is renting to be cut off and hints to the British security forces that the area’s IRA cell might be up to something.
Pig is indeed planning an operation, but the plan begins to fall apart when the local priest informs the squad of Bright’s doings and of Cunningham’s threats to reveal the cell’s location to the British. When the priest recommends that Pig return the girl to her father and apologize profusely, Pig loses his temper and—in front of the priest—insists that his men find him another young woman to take the place of Cunningham’s daughter.
The group’s most skilled sniper, a man named Achill, reminds Pig that the members of the cell avoid local entanglements while working on an operation. Achill cautions Pig to wait until after the operation has been carried out. A furious Pig suggests that Achill turn over his own young lover, Brigid, so that she can warm his bed instead.
Achill, who has an emotional attachment to Brigid, explodes. He reveals to his fellow foot soldiers that the operation originates not from the top, but from Pig’s wounded pride. Pig’s sister-in-law has left his brother, Dog, to inform on the IRA to the British, and Pig is out to avenge his family.
Pig does not back down, and Achill announces that he will allow Brigid to go to Pig—but that this will be his last action as a member of the squad. He will not fight under Pig any longer. Without Achill, the squad is considerably weakened and it’s questionable whether they can pull off the operation at all. But Pig digs in his heels and the fracture widens.
I can’t say too much about the plot of Country, because I don’t want to spoil the surprises. But the novel is an earthy, violent and tragicomic tale. Despite being firmly rooted in mid-1990s Northern Ireland, it retains most of the Iliad’s themes, including the notion of attaining glory through battlefield daring, the tragic flaws of unforgiving anger and wounded pride, and the inevitability of violence and loss as a result.
Unlike in Homer’s Iliad, though, Country has no heroes and the story does not reflect well on any of the characters. Pig is, of course, the self-serving villain, but a portion of his villainy stems from his ineptitude.
This is a partial review. The complete review can be found at Dear Author, here: https://dearauthor.com/book-reviews/r...
September 23, 2025
i feel like when i read this i read this through the eyes of the iliad. i was attaching characters names to those in the book and recognising the flow of things, so in that respect i loved it, because the iliad is one of those books that is integral to my passions (greek mythology). i would love to reread this again in maybe a year through a more irish vs english eye though! i felt a lot of the terminology flew over my head a little, and i really want to delve into the nitty and gritty of this as it is SO GOOD. i don’t like the portrayal of brigid (briseis) though. and patroclus and achilles are literally together (in love) tf why are we making them “brothers” stfu. but i still love the poetic way this book is written.
August 23, 2019
I think I originally found this in a "Best books of 2018" list in a magazine or newspaper. I'm glad I did, because it seems to have passed largely unnoticed, not getting on any shortlists or even longlists as far as I can tell, and it's brilliant.
It's the story of the Iliad transposed virtually in its entirety to Northern Ireland in the 1990s, while a ceasefire is in progress and negotiations which will ultimately lead to the Good Friday Agreement are ongoing. A small band of PIRA members in a border settlement are the Greeks, while the British army are the Trojans (an ironic role reversal). The indifferent, scheming Gods are of course played by politicians.
It works amazingly well. If you know the Iliad there are lots of in jokes (the PIRA HQ is a pub known as the Ships; the British base is in a castle known as Illiam, because the sign used to say William and the W fell off). It's pretty easy to identify characters; often the nicknames tell you. Sniper Achill is Achilles of course, with his devoted friend Pat at his side. Agamemnon and Menelaus are Pig and Dog; Helen is Dog's wife Nellie. I particularly liked Nellie's section of the story where we can see how having sex while off her head on Ecstasy is the start of a dangerous slide she is powerless to prevent; but Nellie is smart and determined enough to get her way in the end.
If you don't know the story at all, you'll probably find aspects of the plot completely bizarre. Dog snatching a 14-year-old girl from a local farmer because his wife has run off for example. Being made to send her back and promptly commandeering Achill's girlfriend. The dishing out of vast troves of "treasure" (money, cars, Playstations, a cow or two, a handful of girls). It shouldn't work, but it does and this is above all because of the wonderfully poetic vernacular, which rings like Homer's lines.
Yes, it features many of the gruesome descriptions of gory deaths, the way the Iliad does. Or take this description of one of the many feasts among warriors; apart from the ingredients it could have been lifted straight from Homer:
Then there are the funeral games of Pat, terrorists racing battered old cars round country lanes ond dishing out prizes from their stash of stolen goods.
If it sounds weird, it is. But it's so clever and well done: the Iliad, it turns out, is sold as a heroic epic, but when you look at it in the plain light of day, it's as atrocity-ridden and pointless as wars always are. You can see this when it's presented as a bunch of ordinary men wreaking vengeance for perceived slights, while being manipulated by far-off politicians. I loved it despite the violence and pessimism and was glued to it for two days. I'm sure it's a brilliant audiobook (read by the author, who is a former actor).
Excellent review from the Irish Times.
It's the story of the Iliad transposed virtually in its entirety to Northern Ireland in the 1990s, while a ceasefire is in progress and negotiations which will ultimately lead to the Good Friday Agreement are ongoing. A small band of PIRA members in a border settlement are the Greeks, while the British army are the Trojans (an ironic role reversal). The indifferent, scheming Gods are of course played by politicians.
It works amazingly well. If you know the Iliad there are lots of in jokes (the PIRA HQ is a pub known as the Ships; the British base is in a castle known as Illiam, because the sign used to say William and the W fell off). It's pretty easy to identify characters; often the nicknames tell you. Sniper Achill is Achilles of course, with his devoted friend Pat at his side. Agamemnon and Menelaus are Pig and Dog; Helen is Dog's wife Nellie. I particularly liked Nellie's section of the story where we can see how having sex while off her head on Ecstasy is the start of a dangerous slide she is powerless to prevent; but Nellie is smart and determined enough to get her way in the end.
If you don't know the story at all, you'll probably find aspects of the plot completely bizarre. Dog snatching a 14-year-old girl from a local farmer because his wife has run off for example. Being made to send her back and promptly commandeering Achill's girlfriend. The dishing out of vast troves of "treasure" (money, cars, Playstations, a cow or two, a handful of girls). It shouldn't work, but it does and this is above all because of the wonderfully poetic vernacular, which rings like Homer's lines.
What was the start of it? The whole wrecking match, that sent so many strong souls roaring down to hell, dogs chewing up the guts ground into the road, birds pecking at the splattered bits of their brains. The way London wanted it to go. The way it always is.
Yes, it features many of the gruesome descriptions of gory deaths, the way the Iliad does. Or take this description of one of the many feasts among warriors; apart from the ingredients it could have been lifted straight from Homer:
'Get a fry going there, Pat.' Pat put rashers on the big pan, long streaky ones, and thick slices of black pudding, and a whole string of the good sausages, and cracked a half dozen eggs in there too. He sprinkled on a few of his herbs, but nobody minded.
Then there are the funeral games of Pat, terrorists racing battered old cars round country lanes ond dishing out prizes from their stash of stolen goods.
If it sounds weird, it is. But it's so clever and well done: the Iliad, it turns out, is sold as a heroic epic, but when you look at it in the plain light of day, it's as atrocity-ridden and pointless as wars always are. You can see this when it's presented as a bunch of ordinary men wreaking vengeance for perceived slights, while being manipulated by far-off politicians. I loved it despite the violence and pessimism and was glued to it for two days. I'm sure it's a brilliant audiobook (read by the author, who is a former actor).
Excellent review from the Irish Times.
August 11, 2025
There are retellings of classic stories which take the general premise or shape of the original but ultimately become their own thing (Ulysses, The Lion King), and there are retellings which cleave so closely to the source material that you really have to discuss them together. Country, as other reviewers have pointed out, is the second type: a beat-by-beat, almost line-by-line reimagining of the Iliad set in the north of Ireland at the tail end of the Troubles. Everything is here in some form or other, right down to a (mercifully shortened) version of the Catalogue of Ships.
(Plot spoilers ahead, by the way. Again, it’s literally the Iliad.)
I've only read the first few books of the Iliad (I got sidetracked, I'll come back to it eventually), but I am interested enough in the history and literature of the Troubles that I decided to check this one off my list anyway. And, while there's no doubt a lot of pleasure to be had in trying to spot as many parallels as you can to Homer--my favorite was a British military base called "Castle William," whose partially-vandalized sign transforms it into "illiam"--I was pleased to find that Country was still totally engrossing even for a non-classicist. Blurbs and reviews call this a thriller, and while sometimes that term is thrown around a bit liberally by litfic readers angling for crossover appeal, I think it's totally apt here. Not usually a speed-reader, I consumed this 320-page novel in the space of two days. Some of that owes to its good bones--it always helps when you're using one of the foundational plots in western literature--but I think even more credit is due to Hughes' poetically idiomatic storytellers' voice (amplified all the more by his own reading of the audiobook) and his vivid, multi-layered portrayal of life on the Irish borderlands in the mid-'90s. In that sense and others, Country makes an interesting contrast with the more widely-acclaimed Troubles novel of 2018, Anna Burns' Milkman. Whereas Burns avoids the usage of almost any proper nouns (even character names) in order to imbue her '70s Belfast with an almost Orwellian or Kafkan sense of paranoia and evasion, Hughes' approach is all about specificity, right down to the Bryan Adams song a group of Provos puts on the jukebox during a celebratory night at the pub. That he's able to maintain this level of grounding detail and a sweeping sense of Homeric myth simultaneously is a testament to his craft. (I'll note that this is also, probably inevitably, a much more male-centric novel than Burns.' The characters are certainly misogynists; mileage will likely vary about whether you feel this attitude seeps into the fabric of the book itself.)
I agree with Rachel that, impressive though it is, Country ultimately suffers a little from its unwavering devotion to the source material. The last third in particular started to come apart for me rather disappointingly, as Hughes finally began to succumb to the difficulty of fitting the Homeric narrative into a modern context in a way which is both believable and narratively satisfying. I think there's really just no way to make the image of two elite soldiers chasing each other in circles around a military base on foot before engaging in single combat convincing in an age of guns, and Hughes' decision to keep in a full-length version of the Achaeans' funeral games following the death of Pat(roclus) completely drains the tension and tragedy out of the denouement. (For that matter, his no-homo treatment of the relationship between Achil and Pat is a little eye-rolling too, though that's not Homer's fault.)
Still, if you're interested in the Iliad, or the Troubles, or literary reimaginings, or even just "literary" books which don't shy away from plot and high drama, I think Country is well worth a look. In my opinion, at least, Hughes does a lot more well than he does poorly, and he's an author I definitely plan to look out for in the future.
(Plot spoilers ahead, by the way. Again, it’s literally the Iliad.)
I've only read the first few books of the Iliad (I got sidetracked, I'll come back to it eventually), but I am interested enough in the history and literature of the Troubles that I decided to check this one off my list anyway. And, while there's no doubt a lot of pleasure to be had in trying to spot as many parallels as you can to Homer--my favorite was a British military base called "Castle William," whose partially-vandalized sign transforms it into "illiam"--I was pleased to find that Country was still totally engrossing even for a non-classicist. Blurbs and reviews call this a thriller, and while sometimes that term is thrown around a bit liberally by litfic readers angling for crossover appeal, I think it's totally apt here. Not usually a speed-reader, I consumed this 320-page novel in the space of two days. Some of that owes to its good bones--it always helps when you're using one of the foundational plots in western literature--but I think even more credit is due to Hughes' poetically idiomatic storytellers' voice (amplified all the more by his own reading of the audiobook) and his vivid, multi-layered portrayal of life on the Irish borderlands in the mid-'90s. In that sense and others, Country makes an interesting contrast with the more widely-acclaimed Troubles novel of 2018, Anna Burns' Milkman. Whereas Burns avoids the usage of almost any proper nouns (even character names) in order to imbue her '70s Belfast with an almost Orwellian or Kafkan sense of paranoia and evasion, Hughes' approach is all about specificity, right down to the Bryan Adams song a group of Provos puts on the jukebox during a celebratory night at the pub. That he's able to maintain this level of grounding detail and a sweeping sense of Homeric myth simultaneously is a testament to his craft. (I'll note that this is also, probably inevitably, a much more male-centric novel than Burns.' The characters are certainly misogynists; mileage will likely vary about whether you feel this attitude seeps into the fabric of the book itself.)
I agree with Rachel that, impressive though it is, Country ultimately suffers a little from its unwavering devotion to the source material. The last third in particular started to come apart for me rather disappointingly, as Hughes finally began to succumb to the difficulty of fitting the Homeric narrative into a modern context in a way which is both believable and narratively satisfying. I think there's really just no way to make the image of two elite soldiers chasing each other in circles around a military base on foot before engaging in single combat convincing in an age of guns, and Hughes' decision to keep in a full-length version of the Achaeans' funeral games following the death of Pat(roclus) completely drains the tension and tragedy out of the denouement. (For that matter, his no-homo treatment of the relationship between Achil and Pat is a little eye-rolling too, though that's not Homer's fault.)
Still, if you're interested in the Iliad, or the Troubles, or literary reimaginings, or even just "literary" books which don't shy away from plot and high drama, I think Country is well worth a look. In my opinion, at least, Hughes does a lot more well than he does poorly, and he's an author I definitely plan to look out for in the future.
October 2, 2019
“Fury. Pure fury. The blood was up. Lost the head completely.”
I am a HUGE fan of classics placed in contemporary settings. And not just your typical reimagined story, but the ones where you forget you’re even in a contemporary setting because you are immersed in everything that made the classic. Merging the Iliad with the IRA, oh mercy, this book is insane! If Baz Lurman optioned the movie rights today, I would already be standing in line to watch it, because holy shit, it’s that fucking good.
There’s lyrical prose and then there’s writing so gorgeous it’s poetic. The words dance beneath your eyes, pulling you into a trance while the story, both known and unknown, propels forward. It’s lush and haunting, evoking the classic timelessness of the ballad with the tragic struggle in Ireland.
What makes this book so good, is the similarities between both wars. Country is the weaving of the two stories, tied seamlessly together. Both epic in tragedy with a grand scale of violence, yet told with such beauty, such grace, that they flow one into the other, a symbol of history repeating itself.
“Death looks like glory to a young man. Get a few years on you, and glory starts looking a lot like death.”
From the very beginning, the language, the imagery, all of it is unique to Ireland and yet, feels like it could be on a beach facing the city of Troy. The characters, some with similar names, others without, are recognizable and also uniquely their own. Country is not an exact retelling. Names are one example of this, but there are countless differences to the ways the stories weave together. For all the variations, though, the intent, the motivations, those are the same.
Okay, confession time. So, I haven’t read The Iliad, or any translations since college. And even then, I didn’t exactly read the actual text. Hello, SparkNotes, my oldest friend… Anyway. I do know the story quite well. I’ve read summaries, read retellings, watched the movies. Anyone interested should definitely check out the series on Netflix. But that’s an aside.
I confess all that, because one of my favorite things about Country, is that while this is centered on Achilles, we get different perspectives on a variety of other characters. I don’t know if the poem does that, but I really loved that detail. It made the experience more immersive. Even without the pieces leading up to Achilles and his role in the war, we understand the complexity of it all. The different dynamics propelling this tragedy forward, in both versions of the story.
“Until then, we live and die here below. One nod of the head, one tip of the scales. The way it always was. The way it has to be.”
Readers fond of classic books will fall in love with Country. Anyone with a love of lyrical prose, poetic story telling, and a creative blend of classic and contemporary within a single story will also fall head over heals.
Thank you TLC Book Tours and Custom House Books for sending me a copy.
I am a HUGE fan of classics placed in contemporary settings. And not just your typical reimagined story, but the ones where you forget you’re even in a contemporary setting because you are immersed in everything that made the classic. Merging the Iliad with the IRA, oh mercy, this book is insane! If Baz Lurman optioned the movie rights today, I would already be standing in line to watch it, because holy shit, it’s that fucking good.
There’s lyrical prose and then there’s writing so gorgeous it’s poetic. The words dance beneath your eyes, pulling you into a trance while the story, both known and unknown, propels forward. It’s lush and haunting, evoking the classic timelessness of the ballad with the tragic struggle in Ireland.
What makes this book so good, is the similarities between both wars. Country is the weaving of the two stories, tied seamlessly together. Both epic in tragedy with a grand scale of violence, yet told with such beauty, such grace, that they flow one into the other, a symbol of history repeating itself.
“Death looks like glory to a young man. Get a few years on you, and glory starts looking a lot like death.”
From the very beginning, the language, the imagery, all of it is unique to Ireland and yet, feels like it could be on a beach facing the city of Troy. The characters, some with similar names, others without, are recognizable and also uniquely their own. Country is not an exact retelling. Names are one example of this, but there are countless differences to the ways the stories weave together. For all the variations, though, the intent, the motivations, those are the same.
Okay, confession time. So, I haven’t read The Iliad, or any translations since college. And even then, I didn’t exactly read the actual text. Hello, SparkNotes, my oldest friend… Anyway. I do know the story quite well. I’ve read summaries, read retellings, watched the movies. Anyone interested should definitely check out the series on Netflix. But that’s an aside.
I confess all that, because one of my favorite things about Country, is that while this is centered on Achilles, we get different perspectives on a variety of other characters. I don’t know if the poem does that, but I really loved that detail. It made the experience more immersive. Even without the pieces leading up to Achilles and his role in the war, we understand the complexity of it all. The different dynamics propelling this tragedy forward, in both versions of the story.
“Until then, we live and die here below. One nod of the head, one tip of the scales. The way it always was. The way it has to be.”
Readers fond of classic books will fall in love with Country. Anyone with a love of lyrical prose, poetic story telling, and a creative blend of classic and contemporary within a single story will also fall head over heals.
Thank you TLC Book Tours and Custom House Books for sending me a copy.
May 9, 2023
Contender for favorite novel of the year. The kind of book I didn’t want to stop because I had to know, then had to pause a lot because it got so intense, dreamed about at night, thought about as soon as I woke, and didn’t want to end. You know the kind…
Achill is an IRA sniper, the girl he’s just lost to a commander is Bridgid, and his friend/apprentice is Pat. If those names sound remarkably like Achilles, Briseis, and Patroclus, you’d be right. It’s a very faithful and completely unromanticized retelling of Homer’s Iliad, but set so firmly in place in the last, violent days of The Troubles in 1990’s Northern Ireland. And if you don’t love Greek myth, it stands perfectly well on it’s own as a profoundly moving war novel, but if you do, this is a book that feels like a puzzle to solve, and literary skill to swoon over.
While the book seems a little too obvious with a few name similarities, don’t let that deter you. It goes in depth into the pride and fury of both the IRA and the British army, both as a whole, and corrupted by certain individuals. The story follows Homer very closely, but never feels gimmicky. He retains themes of attaining glory through battlefield bravery, the tragic flaws of blind anger and pride, and the inevitability of loss and grief. Instead of chariot battles on the plains outside Troy, we have car bombs and covert urban operations, spying, mission planning at a local pub, and a fragile ceasefire achieved by peace talks between London, Dublin, and Sinn Fein.
The depth of emotion when Pat dies, (no spoilers, this is the Iliad, remember?!), or when the Brits come for the Hector character’s body, just kicked me in the gut. What powerful writing. It’s a war story, so be aware that there is a lot of salty language, gruesome violence, and misogyny. Please listen on audio for a full experience. In the end, this is one of the most well known classic stories for a reason, and it resonates even more powerfully translated into this modern context.
Achill is an IRA sniper, the girl he’s just lost to a commander is Bridgid, and his friend/apprentice is Pat. If those names sound remarkably like Achilles, Briseis, and Patroclus, you’d be right. It’s a very faithful and completely unromanticized retelling of Homer’s Iliad, but set so firmly in place in the last, violent days of The Troubles in 1990’s Northern Ireland. And if you don’t love Greek myth, it stands perfectly well on it’s own as a profoundly moving war novel, but if you do, this is a book that feels like a puzzle to solve, and literary skill to swoon over.
While the book seems a little too obvious with a few name similarities, don’t let that deter you. It goes in depth into the pride and fury of both the IRA and the British army, both as a whole, and corrupted by certain individuals. The story follows Homer very closely, but never feels gimmicky. He retains themes of attaining glory through battlefield bravery, the tragic flaws of blind anger and pride, and the inevitability of loss and grief. Instead of chariot battles on the plains outside Troy, we have car bombs and covert urban operations, spying, mission planning at a local pub, and a fragile ceasefire achieved by peace talks between London, Dublin, and Sinn Fein.
The depth of emotion when Pat dies, (no spoilers, this is the Iliad, remember?!), or when the Brits come for the Hector character’s body, just kicked me in the gut. What powerful writing. It’s a war story, so be aware that there is a lot of salty language, gruesome violence, and misogyny. Please listen on audio for a full experience. In the end, this is one of the most well known classic stories for a reason, and it resonates even more powerfully translated into this modern context.
January 3, 2025
Fun setting and enjoyable to read but the supplanting of one story onto another did create a few unbelievable conversations and decisions by characters.
September 7, 2025
i have a lot of thoughts about this, mostly HIGHLY complimentary, but the biggest thing i want to say is HE ADAPTED THE CATALOGUE OF SHIPS BITCHES
Read
January 27, 2025I’m familiar with the story of The Iliad but to be fair, not overly familiar, so I have doubtless missed loads of references to it in this clever book, but it’s a great read nevertheless. It’s possible to write about visceral brutality in a way that is both lyrical and explicit (e.g. Beat Sterchi Cow, Blindboy Boatclub ‘Shovel Duds’), but there’s no beautifying of violence here: it’s proper blood-and-guts rage (‘Fury. Pure fury. The blood was up’ are the opening lines). The poeticism is instead in the relentless rhythm of the prose, a constant beat and repetition that presumably reflects that in the original – the more often I encountered the phrase, ‘Wait now until you hear’, the more I was taken to the original thrum of this ancient oral story, and the more its timeless message impinged on my reading. This is mixed with an Irish idiom that falls easily on the ear, and the result is a reading experience of standing in two places at once and hearing the echo of the distant past in a tale that is all too familiar.
The standout moments are so cleverly repurposed: Pat (Patroclus) enters battle dressed in Achill’s Kevlar vest and balaclava; where Achilles fights the river Xanthos, helped by the goddess Hera, here he swims across a reservoir and is hauled out by ‘Big Sheila’, a local Sinn Féin activist. The climax of Achill’s stand-off with Henry (Hector) and the latter’s subsequent death and the mutilation of his corpse are given extra poignancy: as in The Iliad, Henry has been betrayed by the gods/British negotiators and faces death and retribution.
It’s such a striking composition, and a refreshing change from the recent genre of wishy-washy rewritings of Greek myth (apologies to Madeleine Miller and Pat Barker, but I find those ‘reimaginings’ limp). Hughes has combined something truly original with one of the oldest stories known to the world, and it has certainly inspired me to dig out my copy of The Iliad to re-read.
The standout moments are so cleverly repurposed: Pat (Patroclus) enters battle dressed in Achill’s Kevlar vest and balaclava; where Achilles fights the river Xanthos, helped by the goddess Hera, here he swims across a reservoir and is hauled out by ‘Big Sheila’, a local Sinn Féin activist. The climax of Achill’s stand-off with Henry (Hector) and the latter’s subsequent death and the mutilation of his corpse are given extra poignancy: as in The Iliad, Henry has been betrayed by the gods/British negotiators and faces death and retribution.
It’s such a striking composition, and a refreshing change from the recent genre of wishy-washy rewritings of Greek myth (apologies to Madeleine Miller and Pat Barker, but I find those ‘reimaginings’ limp). Hughes has combined something truly original with one of the oldest stories known to the world, and it has certainly inspired me to dig out my copy of The Iliad to re-read.
February 6, 2025
What a book!! A brilliant reworking of The Iliad, hugely enjoyable and gripping in its transposition to Northern Ireland just prior to the peace accords.
Hughes creates powerful, rhythmical speeches from the main, and even some minor, characters which roll around your mind like the poetry of The Iliad itself. It's quite an achievement. And despite the modern setting, this is all strangely convincing.
It was highly satisfying spotting the characters like Achilles, Patroclos, Prium, Helen, Hector and so on, in their 20th century equivalents, as it was to see funeral games rendered as car racing and arm-wrestling.
For fans of epic literature, recent modern history, explorations of tragedy, hubris and the waste of war - a classic story extremely well-told.
Hughes creates powerful, rhythmical speeches from the main, and even some minor, characters which roll around your mind like the poetry of The Iliad itself. It's quite an achievement. And despite the modern setting, this is all strangely convincing.
It was highly satisfying spotting the characters like Achilles, Patroclos, Prium, Helen, Hector and so on, in their 20th century equivalents, as it was to see funeral games rendered as car racing and arm-wrestling.
For fans of epic literature, recent modern history, explorations of tragedy, hubris and the waste of war - a classic story extremely well-told.
February 7, 2019
So, this was extraordinary! Using the story of the Iliad to frame the story of a Provisional IRA squad on the Irish border, 1996, served both stories so well. It brought me in to the unique circumstances of Northern Ireland while also giving a terrible sense of 'how it has always/will always be'. The shadow of the higher ups, in Belfast and Dublin and London, calling the shots, moving chess pieces, intervening on whims, like Zeus and Athena and Aphrodite - so chilling. There were so many moments where I was just astounded at how well the Iliad translated to this context. And there were other moments where I was aghast at the violence being described, so particular in many ways to the Northern Irish context, and yet that somehow made the Trojan war more vivid to me too. Intertextuality for the win, it was almost like reading both books at once!
December 3, 2023
Country is set in South Armagh in 1996, at the time the IRA and the British Army have agreed to a ceasefire. South Armagh was known as Bandit Country during the Troubles. It was an IRA stronghold, and heavily patrolled by the British army due to its proximity to the border with the Republic. The RA to the locals or PIRA to the army, carried out numerous attacks and then would slip over the border. Easy access to the Republic also facilitated smuggling of goods, and guns. In Country, the local IRA is resisting the ceasefire, while at the same time, the British Army is under orders to hold back despite their provocation in order to assure the ceasefire holds.
The episodes of providing women for IRA commanders, and the kidnapping of a Protestant farmer’s underage daughter as a live-in companion for Pig, their chief, were disturbing tangents to the story of the ceasefire. But when a friend told me that the story parallels The Illiad, the pieces came together. This was a brilliant move by the author, a native of Armagh. The passion of the IRA men, unwilling to give up the fight for a ceasefire, parallels themes of The Illiad, which describes the last years of The Trojan War. There is a final showdown between the greatest warrior of the Greeks, Ajax, and the Trojan, Hector, which is recreated in Country. A surprising element of Country are two scenes where IRA combatants and British soldiers see the humanity in each other. Like The Illiad, Country is not cynical is describing the passions of the IRA combatants, and differentiates the madness of Pig, and the calculated discipline of the sniper, Achill, a fighter from Mayo.
Writing a novel set in Armagh, Northern Ireland during the Troubles is a tricky proposition. Hughes knows the language of the area, and the history of the conflict which led to a dynamic, hard-to-put-down novel. For a detailed review of this novel and exploration of the parallels with The Illiad, see Will Byrnes excellent review here on Goodreads.
November 2023
I participate in abook group that is hosted in the Linen Hall Library in Belfast via Zoom. This time I listened to the audiobook of the novel which I highly recommend. It was well worth rereading as I don't remember lots of details of books that I have read. I suppose there is something to be said for reading fewer books and taking your time with them. That way they may remain with us.
The episodes of providing women for IRA commanders, and the kidnapping of a Protestant farmer’s underage daughter as a live-in companion for Pig, their chief, were disturbing tangents to the story of the ceasefire. But when a friend told me that the story parallels The Illiad, the pieces came together. This was a brilliant move by the author, a native of Armagh. The passion of the IRA men, unwilling to give up the fight for a ceasefire, parallels themes of The Illiad, which describes the last years of The Trojan War. There is a final showdown between the greatest warrior of the Greeks, Ajax, and the Trojan, Hector, which is recreated in Country. A surprising element of Country are two scenes where IRA combatants and British soldiers see the humanity in each other. Like The Illiad, Country is not cynical is describing the passions of the IRA combatants, and differentiates the madness of Pig, and the calculated discipline of the sniper, Achill, a fighter from Mayo.
Writing a novel set in Armagh, Northern Ireland during the Troubles is a tricky proposition. Hughes knows the language of the area, and the history of the conflict which led to a dynamic, hard-to-put-down novel. For a detailed review of this novel and exploration of the parallels with The Illiad, see Will Byrnes excellent review here on Goodreads.
November 2023
I participate in abook group that is hosted in the Linen Hall Library in Belfast via Zoom. This time I listened to the audiobook of the novel which I highly recommend. It was well worth rereading as I don't remember lots of details of books that I have read. I suppose there is something to be said for reading fewer books and taking your time with them. That way they may remain with us.
February 7, 2020
This was fantastic. The story is the Illiad re-imagined in 1990s Northern Ireland, and the author carries it off with perfect success. It reminds me a bit of "The Story of Edgar Sawtelle" which was a reworking of Hamlet. Like that story, "Country" works as a story in and of itself. But the magic is in the interplay between the new story and the original. You see the grieving, raging IRA sniper superimposed over a Greek demigod and the British career solider whose shadow is a Trojan prince. Sometimes, the allusions between old and new are clear-cut, like in the character of Pat. Other times, they are more amorphous - like in the case of the gods, who are here depicted as the distant powers-that-be in London and Dublin and Stormont. It's all so well done, and it adds such depth to the story. Hughes captures the ugliness and futility of war, especially these unending conflicts where there can never be a winner, so well. Read this book! (But, realistically, read the whole of "The Illiad" and a lot about the 800 years of oppression, the formation of the Irish Republic, the division of Ireland, the splintering of the IRA, The Troubles, and the Stormont Talks/Good Friday Agreement first - it will probably make more sense that way.)
September 27, 2019
A stirring book with lots of tension and heart. By heart, I mean you develop definite feelings for the characters, whether you like them or not With names like Pig and Dog and the Shooter, you are told who they are.
The timeframe is the 1990's Ireland where a group of IRA fighters is unwilling to give up the fight. One of their wives became an informant. Another is badly hurt. Revenge is the only course.
At times the vernacular is difficult but the writing is genuine. You are present.
A lot of reviewers reference The Iliad which I have not read or studied. But no need for that. It is still a great book.
Thank you Custom House Books for the Advance Readers Edition.
The timeframe is the 1990's Ireland where a group of IRA fighters is unwilling to give up the fight. One of their wives became an informant. Another is badly hurt. Revenge is the only course.
At times the vernacular is difficult but the writing is genuine. You are present.
A lot of reviewers reference The Iliad which I have not read or studied. But no need for that. It is still a great book.
Thank you Custom House Books for the Advance Readers Edition.
August 10, 2018
Extraordinary retelling of the Iliad. An adrenaline rush from start to finish, I could hardly put it down. From the off, the language paints a vivid sense of time and place. The characters are complicated and real and convey just how complex the Troubles were for all involved. Highly recommended.
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