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The 2011 Award

 

Murphy

 

John the Revelator

by Peter Murphy

 

 

 

Nominated by:

  • Limerick City Library, Ireland.

 

Publisher of Nominated Edition:

Faber and Faber, UK.

 

the complete A-Z listing of nominated authors
ABOUT THE BOOK

 
The Revelator is narrated in the compelling voice of an introverted, watchful adolescent, John Devine. Stuck in a small town, worried over by his single mother - the chain-smoking, bible-quoting Lily - and the gregarious but sinister Mrs Nagle, he yearns for escape. When Jamey Corboy, a self-styled Rimbaudian boy-wonder, arrives in town, John’s life suddenly fills with possibilities - welcome and otherwise - and as he hides from the reality of his mother’s ever-worsening health, he is faced with a terrible dilemma.  
 
Brilliantly evoking all the frustrations and pent-up energy of a parochial adolescence, John the Revelator also gradually becomes the story of Lily herself, and the secrets of her past. Suffused with eerie imagery, black humour and told in hypnotic prose, John the Revelator is a novel to fall in love with.

(From Publisher).
  . 

 
ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Peter Murphy is a senior writer for Dublin's Hot Press, and has contributed to Rolling Stone and Music Week. He is also a regular guest on RTE's arts review show The View, and has contributed liner notes to the forthcoming remastered edition of the Anthology of American Folk Music. He lives in Dublin. 

LIBRARIAN'S COMMENTS

A tremendously powerful novel which transforms the daily tedium of small town life, adolescence, friendship, family, religion into a fascinating and magical tale of literary richness.

 

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