Country Audiobook By Michael Hughes cover art

Country

 Preview

Audible Standard 30-day free trial

Try Standard free
Select 1 audiobook a month from our entire collection of titles.
Yours as long as you’re a member.
Get unlimited access to bingeable podcasts.
Standard auto renews for $8.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Country

By: Michael Hughes
Narrated by: Michael Hughes
Try Standard free

$8.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $20.03

Buy for $20.03

A vivid and brutal reimagining of Homer's Iliad, set in the Troubles of the late twentieth-century.

That was the start of it. A terrible business altogether. Oh, it was all kept off the news, for the sake of the talks and the ceasefire. But them that were around that part of the country remember every bit.
Wait now till you hear the rest.

Northern Ireland, 1996.

After twenty-five years of conflict, the IRA and the British have agreed an uneasy ceasefire, as a first step towards lasting peace. But if decades of savage violence are leading only to smiles and handshakes, those on the ground in the border country will start to question what exactly they have been fighting for.

When an IRA man's wife turns informer, he and his brother gather their old comrades for an assault on the local army base. But the squad's feared sniper suddenly refuses to fight, and the SAS are sent in to crush this rogue terror cell before it can wreck the fragile truce, and drag the whole region back to the darkest days of the Troubles.

Inspired by the oldest war story of them all, this powerful new Irish novel explores the brutal glory of armed conflict, and the bitter tragedy of those on both sides who offer their lives to defend the honour of their country.

(P)2018 Hodder & Stoughton Limited©2018 Michael Hughes Literary Fiction Fiction Genre Fiction Political Spies & Politics Sniper Thriller & Suspense Espionage

Critic reviews

A lively, convincing demotic that captures an Irish idiomatic flow and an echo of Homer's formalities and hexametric lines. It begs to be read aloud
The language is enough to keep you enthralled . . . a violent pounding demotic as memorable in its way as Homer's hexameter
A bold, imaginative second novel
Energetic . . . an ingenious refitting that illuminates both conflicts
Country explodes with verbal invention, rapid juxtaposition, brutality and fun . . . Hughes's linguistic dexterity, his ear for dialogue, his understanding of character, the energy of his prose
Reading this book is like sitting in the pub listening to a good friend tell you stories. It does what only the best retellings can and makes you see the myth anew
This is a hard, rigorous and necessary book which grinds out its beauty as the song cycles of empire and resistance fall silent, choked in their own blood
A brutal and gripping thriller in its own right . . . a consistently engrossing read, written in Ulster-flavoured prose as rich and evocative as you would expect from a professional thespian
Consistently thrilling . . . By enlisting the visceral power of The Iliad to illustrate the violence of the Troubles . . . Hughes has written a striking, memorable book
Prose that crackles with the vernacular of hard men, yet remains compulsively readable throughout . . . a classic story, and a gritty contemporary thriller, this book is an extraordinary achievement
This powerful novel is full of blistering writing that leaps off the page and is perhaps the first great fiction about The Troubles since Dermot Healy
I couldn't put Country down. Tears through the pages at a cracking pace with sharp, smart prose and excellent dialogue
Hughes has to contort some and plot elements to match the exigencies of themes such as honour, religion, slavery and warrior/royal behaviour in the 8th century pre-Christian Mediterranean world. But he does this so cleverly and audaciously that the reader goes with him - for the sheer fun of it, if nothing else . . . In a way, his colloquialised retelling (a tour de force of voice, reminiscent of the heights achieve by Patrick McCabe in The Butcher Boy) is truer to the hexameter rhythms of the original poem
Exceptionally good
Clear-voiced and visceral . . . This enjoyable novel gives voice to fine characters that are challenging, selfish, brutal and worth your time
Thrillerishly bite-sized chapters hurtle towards an explosive climax
Hughes brilliantly reconciles Homeric rhythms with his muscular modern idiom
Country struck me as this year's most daring Troubles novel
All stars
Most relevant
A powerful tale of the last days of The Troubles, very well written and beautifully read by the author.

Powerful

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This is such an underrated book! Michael is an author to look out for

So good

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The author freely admits to removing himself as much as possible from the war, the so-called "Troubles", when he lived in the north of Ireland--of being a Green Party member in school versus Sinn Féin--of being an anglophile during a time of extreme oppression by the English government against his fellow Irish Catholics in the illegally occupied 6 counties, & then moving to London (posh Oxford) & then to a posh France theatre school.
However, he brazenly takes the time to write a book pretending to know how volunteers in the Irish Republican Army behaved. "Country" sickeningly capitalizes on their struggles, pain, & death by an author intentionally removed from their real stories. However, the book is praised by those with a vested interest in vilifying the brave Irish people who fought for freedom during a deadly, oppressive, terroristic regime by the British military.
After spending years listening to Irish Republicans when I lived in Ireland during the 1990s, I can assure you that Michael Hughes is woefully ignorant & arrogant with his character portrayal. So bad that I luckily got a refund on the Kindle edition I naively bought.
The author should simply stick with bit parts as a sporadic part-time actor in theatre & TV.

Dreadful, unrealistic representation of NI

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.