The Strangers' House

A penetrating study and celebration of Northern Irish literature— telling the region’s story through the extraordinary novels and poetry produced by decades of conflict.
Northern Ireland is one hundred years old. Northern Ireland does not exist. Both of these statements are true. It just depends who you ask. How do you write about a place like this? THE STRANGERS' HOUSE asks this question of the region’s greatest writers, living and dead. What have they made of Northern Ireland – and what has Northern Ireland made of them?

Northern Ireland is roughly the same size as the State of Connecticut, yet has produced an extraordinary number of celebrated poets and novelists. Louis MacNeice, too clever to be happy, formed by his childhood on the shores of Belfast Lough; son of a Protestant clergyman “banned for ever from the candles of the Irish poor”. C. S. Lewis, who discovered Narnia in the rolling…