Mike McCormack – This Plague of Souls

Mike McCormack’s latest novel, This Plague of Souls, is a follow up to his Booker-listed bestseller Solar Bones and revisits Nealon as he returns from prison to his house in the west of Ireland. However, upon arrival home he realises that there’s no sign of his wife and family, in fact it’s as if they never existed, or he never existed. Confused, Nealon is then contacted by a stranger who offers to tell him what happened to his family in return for just one meeting. And so the pair meet, and through terse conversations and against the backdrop of an unfolding terrorist attack, secrets are revealed. Described as an existential noir, This Plague of Souls presents an incisive portrait of a young and struggling family, and a ruthless interrogation of what we owe to those nearest to us, and to the world at large.

Mike McCormack is an award-winning novelist and short story writer from Mayo. He is a previous winner of the Irish Book of the Year award, the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the Goldsmiths Prize and the Dublin International Literary Award. He was shortlisted for the Booker Award for Solar Bones and was awarded a Civitella Ranieri Fellowship in 2007. A monosentence novel that all takes place on the one day, Solar Bones won numerous awards and was a literary sensation.