Broken landscapes

About this book

"Ernie O'Malley was a revolutionary and a writer. One of the leading figures in the Irish Independence and civil wars, he survived wounds, imprisonment and hunger strike. This book tells of his journeys afterwards in Europe and the Americas. O'Malley moved in wide social circles that included Paul Strand, Hart Crane and Jack Yeats. He was a close friend of John Ford, and worked on The Quiet Man . Back in Mayo he established a small farm. Marrying Helen Hooker, an American heiress, he had three children before a bitter separation. O'Malley established his literary reputation with his magnificent memoir, On Another Man's Wound . For the first time, this new collection of letters, diaries and fragments opens the broad panorama of his life to readers. In doing so it enriches the history of Ireland's troubled independence, reflecting on loss and reconciliation. It links the old world to the new: O'Malley perched on the edge of the Atlantic, a folklore collector, art critic and radio broadcaster. O'Malley travelled through Italy, the American south-west, Mexico and points in between. In Taos, he mingled with the artistic set around D.H. Lawrence. He drank with Patrick Kavanagh, Liam O'Flaherty and Louis MacNeice. The young painter Louis le Brocquy was a guest at Burrishoole. These places and people stayed with O'Malley in his private writing, collected here from family and institutional archives. Reading these letters, diaries and fragments is to see Ireland in the tumultuous world of the twentieth century, as if for the first time."--Publisher's description.