Strumpet City

Strumpet City depicts a pivotal event in Irish social history – the mass lockout of trade unionists by employers in 1913 – and has a wonderfully memorable cast of characters – not least the city itself. One reviewer commented – “if Ulysses is Dublin’s odyssey, Strumpet City is Dublin’s epic”. The same reviewer is of the opinion that if anyone is seeking the Great Irish Novel – they need look no further.

James Plunkett commented that the novel ‘is a picture of Dublin in the seven years 1907 to 1914. Against the backdrop of social agitation, it is about the attitudes of various strata of society—from Dublin Castle and people of property down to the destitute poor and the outcasts. Joyce wrote about the moderately middle class, and O’Casey about the slums of the period. I was concerned with finding a form in which all the elements could fit.’

From the destitution of Rashers Tierney to the solid, aspirant respectability of Fitz and Mary, the priestly life of Father O’Connor, and the upper-class world of Yearling and the Bradshaws, it paints a portrait of a city of stark contrasts, with an urban working class mired in vicious poverty.

Strumpet City is the great, sweeping Irish historical novel of the 20th century.

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