Description
Book SynopsisBuffún is wracked by the living nightmare of Irish history. His torments are surreal but no less frightening than the awful truth. When Oliver Cromwell turns up, the hapless buffoon can't cope. This Cromwell is a cocky tyrant who wants to run a football team, or start a taxi business. Enter the Belly, the IRA, an Irish giant, and Billy of the Boyne: 'William of Orange is polishing pianos / In convents and other delicate territories, / His nose purple from sipping turpentine.' Kennelly's Cromwell delighted and scandalised readers in Ireland when it was first published by a small Dublin press in 1983. This extraordinary, extravagantly Irish act of revenge has retained its power to shock.
Trade Review'This is an astonishing book...an intense poetic outcry. It is energy and honesty that make this book of horrors humanly tolerable' – Seán Lucy, The Tablet. 'Brendan Kennelly has got guts. And a large portion of those are served up here. This book is not for the squeamish' – Mark Patrick Hederman, Irish Literary Supplement. 'One of the most extraordinary books I have ever come across in my life' – Gay Byrne, The Late Late Show (RTE). 'Cromwell is explosive, expansive, prolific, explicit' – Edna Longley.
