Set in Dublin during the Lockout of 1913, Strumpet City is a panoramic novel of city life. It embraces a wide range of social milieux, from the miseries of the tenements to the cultivated, bourgeois Bradshaws. It introduces a memorable cast of characters: the main protagonist, Fitz, a model of the hard-working, loyal and abused trade unionist; the isolated, well-meaning and ineffectual Fr O'Connor; the wretched and destitute Rashers Tierney. In the background hovers the enormous shadow of Jim Larkin, Plunkett's real-life hero. Strumpet City's popularity derives from its realism and its naturalistic presentation of traumatic historical events. There are clear heroes and villians. The book is informed by a sense of moral outrage at the treatment of the locked-out trade unionists, the indifference and evasion of the city's clergy and middle class and the squalor and degradation of the tenement slums.
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Review:
'Many studies have been written about the quest for the Great American Novel. Anyone seeking its Irish equivalent need search no further.' --Eileen Battersby, The Irish Times
'If there is one novel that bares the soul of Dublin as much as the life-in-one-day of Ulysses, it is James Plunkett's Strumpet City' --Donal O'Donoghue RTE Guide. 30 March 2013
'Dublin City Libraries has chosen the masterpiece as its One City, One Book for 2013. Epic.' --Joe Duffy The Irish Mail on Sunday 24 March 2013
About the Author:
The late James Plunkett drew on his city-centre working-class background, and his commitment to the labour movement, as the background for his fiction. Strumpet City is acknowledged as his masterpiece. His other novels include Farewell Companions and The Circus Animals. He was an accomplished short-story writer and also wrote for radio and theatre.
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- PublisherGill & Macmillan Ltd
- Publication date2006
- ISBN 10 071714058X
- ISBN 13 9780717140589
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages560
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