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Ghost Light
  • Published: 3 October 2019
  • ISBN: 9781529112627
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 272
  • RRP: $24.99

Ghost Light

Formats & editions
Paperback
3 Oct 2019
EBook
2 May 2011
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A powerful and deeply moving masterpiece about love, partings and reconciliation. Reissued in a new series look to coincide with the publication of his new novel, Shadowplay

A powerful and deeply moving masterpiece about love, partings and reconciliation from the international bestselling author of Star of the Sea

'A virtuoso display of literary talent...brimming with sympathy and skill' Irish Times

Dublin, 1907. A young actress begins an affair with a damaged older man, the leading playwright at the theatre where she works.

Outspoken and flirtatious, Molly Allgood is a Catholic girl from the slums of Dublin, dreaming of stardom in America. Her lover, John Synge, is a troubled genius, whose life is hampered by convention and by the austere and God-fearing mother with whom he lives. Their affair, sternly opposed by friends and family, is quarrelsome, affectionate and tender.

Many years later, Molly, now a poverty-stricken old woman, makes her way through London's bomb-scarred city streets, alone but for a snowdrift of memories. Her once dazzling career has faded but her unquenchable passion for life has kept her afloat.

'Masterful in its management of re-imagined lives and the time they inhabit' Financial Times
  • Published: 3 October 2019
  • ISBN: 9781529112627
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 272
  • RRP: $24.99
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About the author

Joseph O'Connor

JOSEPH O’CONNOR was born in Dublin. His books include Cowboys and Indians, Inishowen, Star of the Sea (American Library Association Award, Irish Post Award for Fiction, France’s Prix Millepages, Italy’s Premio Acerbi, Nielsen Golden Book Award, Prix Madeleine Zepter for European Novel of the Year), Redemption Falls, Ghost Light (Dublin One City One Book 2011), Shadowplay (Irish Book Awards Novel of the Year, Costa Novel of the Year shortlist) and the previous books of his Rome Escape Line trilogy, My Father’s House (Hot Press Novel of the Year 2023) and The Ghosts of Rome (Irish Book Awards Book of the Year 2025). His fiction has been translated into forty languages. He received the 2012 Irish PEN Award for Outstanding Contribution to Literature and in 2014 was appointed Frank McCourt Professor and Chair of Creative Writing at the University of Limerick. www.josephoconnorauthor.com
portrait photo of Joseph O'Connor

Also by Joseph O'Connor

The City of Echoes
The Ghosts Of Rome
My Father's House
Shadowplay
The Thrill of it All
Where Have You Been?
Irish Male At Home And Abroad
See all

Praise for Ghost Light

A virtuoso display of literary talent...brimming with sympathy and skill

Adrian Frazier, Irish Times

A superbly written, magically evocative novel

Scotsman

Ghost Light...has an astonishing command of voice and period detail, and offers an intimacy with the lives of others which is rare in fiction

Colm Toibin, Daily Telegraph, Books of the Year

Throughout a complex structure with shifting timeframes, O'Connor's writing is compellingly beautiful and Molly is marvelously drawn. A captivating read

Guardian

A spellbinding read

The Times

A subtle wonder... Unmissible

Daily Mail

Joseph O'Connor is one of the most exciting novelists of his generation

Daily Mail