Famine

by Liam O'Flaherty

Book by O'Flaherty, Liam

Genres: Historical Fiction, Ireland, Fiction, Irish Literature, Literature, Classics, Historical

430 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1937

About the author

People know Irish writer Liam O'Flaherty especially for his short stories, collected in Two Lovely Beasts (1948) and The Pedlar's Revenge (1976).

This significant novelist, a major figure in the literary renaissance, also wrote short stories. Left-wing politics involved him as was his brother Tom Maidhc O'Flaherty (also a writer), and their father, Maidhc Ó Flaithearta, for a time.

Reviews

[Padraic · Rating 5 out of 5]

Most Irish Americans I know think of the Famine this way: Bloody British.

I think of the Famine this way: the family dog may have eaten your dead ancestors. Simpler, perhaps, but a lot more visceral.

O'Flaherty was not the first Irish writer to note how quiet the Irish countryside got in 1849, but he used it to best effect.

[İpek Dadakçı · Rating 5 out of 5]

19.yüzyıl ortalarında İrlanda’nın küçük bir kasabasında yaşayan bir ailenin dağılma hikayesiyle birlikte İrlanda’nın tarihini anlatıyor Kıtlık. Birleşik Krallık’ın bataklık bölgelerinde yaşamaya mahkum edilmiş, üstelik buralarda da feodal düzen nedeniyle İngiliz toprak sahiplerine kira ödemek ve patates dışında yetiştirdikleri her tarım ürünü için vergi vermekle yükümlü olan halkın, mecburen temel gıda maddesi olmuş patateslere hastalık vurunca ülke tarihinde yaşanan en trajik olaylardan biri olan Büyük Kıtlık ya da İrlanda Patates Kıtlığı’nda yaşadıklarını aktarıyor. Her ne kadar kurgunun merkezinde yaklaşık yedi yıllık bir dönem olsa da, meselenin tarihi arka planını da es geçmemiş Liam O’Flaherty; sorunun köklerini de mercek altına almış ve İrlanda meselesini tüm boyutları ve detaylarıyla yedirmiş kurguya. Bunu da o kadar güzel yapmış ki okurken İrlanda tarihi hakkında ortalama düzeyde bilgi sahibi olmama rağmen bilgiye boğulma hissiyle kurgudan kopmadığım gibi, kafamda yazarın anlattıklarıyla bütünlüklü ve detaylı bir portre çizebildim ve konu hakkında daha çok araştırma yapma isteği duydum. Yaşanan kıtlık sürecinde din adamları ve Kilise’nin tutumuyla böyle bir felaketten dahi nemalanma derdinde olan siyasiler, her yeri kendisine sömürülecek bir ambar ya da maden gibi gören İngiltere’nin sömürgeci politikası başta olmak üzere felaketin sorumlularını tüm yönleriyle eleştirirken, aslında milli ya da dini, kimlik konusuyla ilgili görünen her şeyin özünde iktisadi olduğunu çok güzel vurgulamış. Tüm bu konuya yaklaşımı ve onu ele almaktaki başarısını, tamamen iyi ya da kötü olarak keskin çizgilerle ayrılmamış, dolayısıyla karikatürize durmayan karakterlerini oluşturmada ve sürükleyici bir hikaye ve duru bir anlatımla aktarmada da gösterince ortaya muazzam bir siyasi ve tarihi roman çıkmış ortaya bana göre. Çok beğendim.

[Trisha · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first heard about this book when I was in Ireland and visited several of the memorials and exhibits that have been created to honor the memories of the people who died as a result of the potato blight that struck Ireland in 1845 and 1846. Over half a million people died because of starvation or related diseases like typhus and cholera. Obviously this was not an exhilarating read! For one thing, before even opening it up I knew it was not going to have a happy ending. Readers are immediately introduced to the three generations of the Kilmartin family who live together in a cramped little cottage on the land they have rented for years from the local landlord. Before the first chapter ends readers have already seen evidence of what that miserable little fungus Phytophthora infestans can do. Within hours of being infected potato fields that were green and thriving, quickly turned into putrid masses of foul smelling, black plants. People could literally watch the destruction spread across their fields and out across the fields of their neighbors in the valley. The novel describes all this in harrowing detail, as well its effects on the people who depended on their potato crops for survival. We're also given a terrible glimpse into the landlord system that existed in Ireland at the time -- Absentee English landlords who relied on unscrupulous land agents to force rents out of starving tenants, eventually evicting them because they could not pay. Most horrible of all was the realization that while thousands and thousands of Irish people were dying because they had no food, ships laden with cattle, sheep and other crops that had not been touched by the famine were leaving Ireland to end up supplying the lavish lifestyles of wealthy English aristocrats. It was not a pretty picture and definitely not an easy book to read. But having Irish ancestors on both sides of our family who immigrated from Ireland around the time of the famine, this book was compelling if for no other reason than to shed a little light on why they came.

[A. Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

O'Flaherty set himself an intricate task because Famine isn't a simple kind of historical undertaking. It doesn't merely make use of a period everyone knows well (or thinks is well known). Rather, O'Flaherty has to educate at the same time as he creates his characters and setting. His novel doesn't end up being a dull set of lesson plans. He broadly sets the stage in a village when blight appears at the beginning of the Great Hunger, with some households better able to weather a weak harvest, and quickly shows how natural disaster and legal structure erase that difference. There are villains, beautiful maidens, daring young men, and all the rest of it--good and bad clergy and wicked shopkeepers. As the novel progresses, we want to know who will live, who will die, will Michael escape, what justices and injustices will emerge. O'Flaherty shows some of the horrors of the starvation, but he does not seek to crush a reader with it. He wants to make many things known, and he succeeds.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although this book isn't as well written as some of my other favorite Irish writers (Frank O'Conner, Brendan Behan, Sean O'Faolain), it is the only novel I have read about a family's experience of the potato famine. It was written well enough to keep me reading it almost straight through - very suspenseful and sad.

[Lauren Conrad · Rating 1 out of 5]

I had to read this for my high school Irish Lit class. We read so many fantastic classics including Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker, George Bernard Shaw, Samuel Beckett, and Frank McCourt, which almost all of my classmates loved. This was by far everyone's least favorite. Firstly, it is a pet peeve of mine when there are so many characters that a reader has to make a chart of some kind to keep track of them. It's like an author being cocky and saying, "It's my story. You do the work." Also, on the subject of characters and pet peeves, the author made a two page description for each character as each one was introduced for the first time, mostly having to do with appearances. It is my opinion as both a reader and a writer that 1. character description should be revealed through action and plot (a very show vs. tell situation). In fact, I hated this so much that when I told my English teacher my opinion on this, she noticed it and became irritated herself. And 2. While appearances are very important to characters, in most cases and not all, behavior is ten times more essential. Lastly, this book was unbelievably melodramatic. Yes, yes, it's about the Irish potato famine, what else could it be besides a piece of melodrama? Still, no matter the subject, there is a line formed when there needs to be humor or empowerment or something.

[Etain Feeley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This has to be one of the most, heart rendering books that I have ever read, so awful, a dreadful period in the history of the Irish State, so many having lost their lives and all because of bureaucracy and political ineptitude.

Beautifully crafted, it captures vividly those dark days. The reader is sucked into an abyss of horror, the tangible damp smell of rotting potatoes prevails throughout.

[Onur · Rating 5 out of 5]

Uzun süredir beni bu kadar etkileyen bir roman okumamıştım. Çarpıcı, bir çok yerde okuru empati yapmaya mecbur bırakacak kadar çarpıcı…
Zor bir dönemi aktaran, mükemmel bir roman!

[Antje · Rating 5 out of 5]

Was für ein Roman! O' Flaherty ist ein Meister der Erzählkunst und versteht es in beeindruckender wie gnadenloser Weise, die entsetzlichen Folgen der Kartoffelpest Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts in Irland zu schildern. Hauptangel- und Drehpunkt ist hierbei der Drei-Generationen-Haushalt der Kilmartins im Schwarzen Tal, der ums nackte Überleben kämpft.
Für jedermann, der sich für dieses irische Schicksal interessiert, bietet der Roman einen ausgezeichneten Einstieg. Anschaulicher können Elend, Hunger, Hoffnungslosigkeit und Tod nicht beschrieben werden, so auch die Verwandlung von Mensch und Tier in scheinbar abgestumpfte und vom Überlebenstrieb zu widerlichen Handlungen gezwungene Wesen. - Natürlich ist dies ein düsterer Roman, der nachdenklich und traurig stimmt. Aber der schleichende und grausame Tod von einer Million Menschen sollte dies auch!

[Sam · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am ashamed to admit that I gave up on this book after 150 pages or so. Maybe it wasn't the book's fault and and I was just too distracted by other things to focus on it properly. It was a sad and atmospheric story about life in Ireland during the potato famine, which in tone and content somehow reminded me of The Grapes of Wrath. The author seemed more concerned with the bigger picture -- the plot, the characters, the history -- than with the sentence-by-sentence, paragraph-by-paragraph details of the writing. I'll finish it someday and then finish this review with a final verdict on whether or not I liked the book.

[Willeke Van Eeckhoutte · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant & harrowing... A must-read for people who love novels about accurate Irish history!

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Liam O'Flaherty's fine tirade of a novel from 1937, set in the far west of Ireland during the infamous & much-debated potato famine of the mid-1840s, tells the dreadful story from a lowly peasant's viewpoint...as a reader would expect from a fully-paid up Communist writer with his own perspective on a tragedy-in-waiting.
Three consecutive bad-weather summers created a catastrophic situation in an island of over 8,000,000, with so many dependent on the blighted potatoes for sustenance & indeed their very existence. The British state's logistical & economic reactions to the crisis was not even close to what was required, & disaster followed with over a million estimated deaths from the effects of creeping starvation & transmitted disease, & another million poor souls fleeing from the benighted island of saints & scholars to new lives in Britain or further afield, (or dismal deaths aboard the inadequately-maintained so-called 'coffin ships' to North America).
To turn such an emotive & highly-charged historical episode into an entertaining but grim novel was a credit to the deceased writer who was something of an enigma himself, to be sure
I read it with a heavy heart, knowing that we have only made some progress towards making such calamities a part of our past, as we contemplate a future already threatening to end in another human disaster. Famines still occur, even after the demise of the British Empire. Why?

[Lea Hart · Rating 4 out of 5]

Es war ein sehr deprimierendes und ernstes Buch, wo man mit den verschiedenen Charakteren mitgefühlt hat. Man bekommt einen guten Einblick in das Leben dieser Charaktere während der Hungernot in Irland.

[Alexander Creecy · Rating 5 out of 5]

fantastic read

[Tuğba · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bu kitabı beğenmeyen İngilizdir.

[Patricia J. O'Brien · Rating 4 out of 5]

The title alone, Famine, should make it clear this is not light reading for entertainment, but it is riveting. That said, it took me a little while to fully commit because at first I found the characters a bit irritating. Liam O'Flaherty gives them all plenty of faults and pettiness. By the end, however, I was moved to tears and saw great depths of love, loyalty, and resilience in these people who lose everything bit by bit until they are wraiths in the last throes of starvation.
I have known about the great famine in Ireland ( 1 million dead, 2.5 million fled), because a number of my ancestors managed to escape it and get to America where they were still poor but were not without food and were able to raise children who survived well enough.
This novel, first published in 1937, made those times very personal and put it within the context of politics and governance by the British in the 1800s.
Here's a quote that resonates with me from early in the book: "Learn to love this Irish earth, as your real mother," whispered the curate. "Then it will speak to you and tell you deep, deep things and beautiful things that are stronger than any misfortune. Listening to the wind, I dream."

[loeilecoute · Rating 5 out of 5]

A horribly wonderful book to read if you are needing to come to some understanding about the Great Hunger: the famine in Ireland beginning in 1845. This book covers the time period of 1845-1846, the latter date when the famine was most devastating. The story is about a family trying to survive in the meanest of times. Interwoven within the narrative is an extensive factual history of what the government was actually doing (or not doing, or avoiding, or not doing extraordinarily well), which will give you a very thorough impression of the conflicts of that time and why this time period continued to reinforce the hatred of the Irish for the English.

I also loved the dialect of the people revealed in their dialogue and conversations--the interactions felt very real: amusing, dark, intemperate, caring: the broad mix of what the Irish people can be that is so confusing, and yet so charming at the same time.

If you can stomach the nature of the story (because what really happened was very shocking if this is your first introduction to the history of the famine) you will really enjoy this well written, informative, and engaging book.

[Elif Aybaş · Rating 5 out of 5]

Celal Üster'in önsözüyle ilgili birkaç kelime etmek istiyorum. Kıtlık'ın yazılışından 50 yıl sonra Üster Mamak Askeri Cezaevinde yapmış Çeviriyi. O'Flaherty'nin Birinci Dünya Savaşında Batı Cephesinde ağır yaralandıktan sonra Güney Amerika ve Ortadoğu dahil olmak üzere birçok yerde işçilik yaptığını, İrlanda'ya dönünce devrimci etkinliklere katıldığını, İrlanda Kominist Partisinin kurucuları arasında yer aldığını da yine önsözden öğreniyoruz. Romanın kaleme alınışından yüz yıl önce meydana gelen büyük kıtlık, İrlanda'nın büyük felaketi olduğu kadar direniş ve devrim hareketinin de fişeği. Yaşanışı, yazılışı ve çevrilişiyle, her bakımdan tarihsel bir metin tutuyoruz elimizde, Yordam'a gerçekten ne kadar teşekkür etsek az. Muhakkak bu denli büyük bir felaketi okumak, etkisinden çıkmak kolay olmayacaktı tabii ama O'Flaherty'nin müthiş anlatıcılığının hakkını da vermek gerekiyor. Öyle sahneler var ki hem dehşetinden irkildim hem de anlatımdan büyülendim. Aynı şekilde dört yüz sayfanın cezaevi koşullarında bu kadar ustalıkla, hiçbir aksama olmadan çevrilmiş olması da çok etkileyici ki burada editör Aslı Uluşahin'e de ayrı teşekkür etmeli.

[Deb · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has been on my bookshelves for years, maybe decades. I now regret I took so long to read this masterpiece, a true classic, by Liam O'Flaherty.
From the Afterword by Thomas Flanagan "The Irish famine of the 1840's, the "great hunger," was one of the appalling calamities of the modern history. In 1845, the population of Ireland stood at about eight-and-a-half million; by the time of the 1851 census, it had been reduced to six-and-a-half million. Of these two million one million had died of starvation and disease. The others had fled this stricken land."
As a piece of historical fiction this great novel touches on class structure, political dissent, feudalism, religious strife, morality, family loyalties, ritualistic societies, among other weighty issues. The peasant family at the centerpiece of this novel are the Kilmartins and we are with them in their battles.
It only took me the first chapter to be in the cadence and time of this book written in 1937, set in the 1840's; persist please and you will find yourself a witness to "Famine".

[Anoosha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Picked this book randomly from a book sale. One of the best decisions I have ever made. What a gem of a book. Capturing history in a way that makes you relive the moments as if you were part of it and suffered through it. You feel for those people as if they are your own family and neighbours. A strange world truly it is, that we are divided by language, colour and culture yet we act the same when thrown into circumstances beyond our control. Throughout the book I was hoping for a really happy closure for all, but I forgot how this was based on what reality and how things don’t always turn out the way we want. We might get one thing and one person on the expense of leaving others behind. Human beings are truly stuck in a nebula of their own misery, fighting their way through it.

[DawnMarie Helin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Every time I read a book about this genocide wrapped in the science of famine, I waiver between heartbroken and furious! O’Flaherty does a wonderful job of detailing the period, the day to day and the effects on families. No one needs a spoiler alert, we know how it came out. What comes out to me so strongly was how poorly people spoke of each other, even while helping save them from starvation. And while I’m as guilty as the next to superstition, the level of harm that believing in curses and witches did was immeasurable. We should be mindful as ever today of the harm of speaking on lies and supposition. To be told your neighbor is evil to keep you suspicious has no expiration date.

[Tony · Rating 2 out of 5]

Up to half-way, the story-line was complex but coherent and with a purpose. However, after a key event in the middle of the story, it rather lost focus; became a series of short chapters of blind alleys as if to demonstrate or justify the authors' perspective. This culminated in an extremely disappointing ending as if the author had got tired of the whole enterprise and wanted to finish the novel quick.

[Özgür Göksu · Rating 5 out of 5]

1845 İrlanda Kıtlığını ve takip eden korkunç açlığı ölümleri çok keskin, vurucu ve aynı zamanda gayet akıcı bir dille anlatan bir eser. İrlanda'yı anlamak, sonraki gelişmeleri, bugünü doğru bir şekilde yorumlayabilmek için çok gerekli bir kitap. Sert ve depresif, elbette konusu itibari ile baş türlüsünü beklemek abes olur.

[Jack Rowland · Rating 3 out of 5]

A slow-burning, despressing novel. An important book, definitely, but one that takes far, far too long to get to the point. The first 200 pages struggle to grab your attention, the next 200 start to get interesting, and the final 50 are some of the most powerful words ever put to paper. A great novel, but not one I'll be rushing into re-reading.

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

O'Flaherty brings the Great Irish Famine vividly to life... which is, of course, rather depressing. Nevertheless, I agree that Mary Kilmartin (the heroine) is one of the great creations of 20th-century Irish fiction.

[Cappy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Make no mistake. This book is unrelentingly dark. But vivid, and human, and honest all the same. There’s no small value in looking deeply into this dark corner of history that does not often get remarked upon with this level of detail.

[Trevor Andrews · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading this book and it tied in well with another I read “Star of the Sea”.

I can understand how the Irish created their attitude to the British with such foul and selfish treatment.

We have food banks these days but I wonder how the English would have coped back in those days.

[Marcia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a good read taking you to Ireland during the great potato famine. The suffering to the native Irish people was disturbing. Loved some of the references to culture and tradition.

It was heartbreaking.

[Sarah Mcgrath · Rating 5 out of 5]

Powerful novel about how the first two years of the Irish famine affected a famine in rural Co. Galway.

[Taylor Allgeier-Follett · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very powerful and interesting, although I found the characters flat and erratic in terms of their characterization. Looking forward to writing on it though!