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Beyond Belfast: A 560-Mile Journey Across Northern Ireland on Sore Feet

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Offbeat, charming, and filled with humour and insight, Beyond Belfast is the story of one man’s misguided attempt at walking the Ulster Way, “the longest waymarked trail in the British Isles.” It’s a journey that takes Will Ferguson through the small towns and half-forgotten villages of Northern Ireland, along rugged coastlines and across barren moorland heights, past crumbling castles and patchwork farms.

From IRA pubs to Protestant marches, from bandits and bad weather to banshees and blood sausage, he wades into the thick of things, providing an affectionate and heartfelt look at one of the most misunderstood corners of the world. As the grandson of a Belfast orphan, Will also peels back the myths and realities of his own family history—a mysterious photograph, rumours of a lost inheritance. The truth, when it comes, is both surprising and funny …

416 pages, Hardcover

First published October 13, 2009

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About the author

Will Ferguson

45 books554 followers
Will Ferguson is an award-winning travel writer and novelist. His last work of fiction, 419, won the Scotiabank Giller Prize. He has won the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour a record-tying three times and has been nominated for both the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and a Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. His new novel, The Shoe on the Roof, will be released October 17, 2017. Visit him at WillFerguson.ca

Ferguson studied film production and screenwriting at York University in Toronto, graduating with a B.F.A. in 1990. He joined the Japan Exchange Teachers Programme (JET) soon after and spent five years in Asia. He married his wife Terumi in Kumamoto, Japan, in 1995. They now live in Calgary with their two sons. After coming back from Japan he experienced a reverse culture shock, which became the basis for his first book Why I Hate Canadians. With his brother, Ian Ferguson, he wrote the bestselling sequel How to be a Canadian. Ferguson details his experiences hitchhiking across Japan in Hokkaido Highway Blues (later retitled Hitching Rides with Buddha), his travels across Canada in Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw, and a journey through central Africa in Road Trip Rwanda. His debut novel, Happiness, was sold into 23 languages around the world. He has written for The New York Times, Esquire UK, and Canadian Geographic magazine.

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