I am no good at letters. -- John McGahern, 1963

John McGahern is consistently hailed as one of the finest Irish writers since James Joyce and Samuel Beckett. Those with whom McGahern corresponded include family, friends and literary luminaries such as Seamus Heaney, Colm Tóibín, Paul Muldoon, Ian Hamilton and Richard Murphy. This volume collects some of the witty, profound and unfailingly brilliant letters that inform both the intellectual and more prosaic concerns of McGahern, who considered the 'myth of Father John' contrary to his well-travelled life between Ireland, England, the United States and France.

It is one of the major contributions to the study of Irish and British literature of the past thirty years, acting not just as a crucial insight into the life and works of a much-revered writer - but also a history of post-war Irish literature and its close ties to British and American literary life.

'One of the greatest writers of our era.' Hilary Mantel

'McGahern brings us that tonic gift of the best fiction, the sense of truth - the sense of transparency that permits us to see imaginary lives more clearly than we see our own.' John Updike