The July Fiction Book Group will be meeting via Zoom
Monday, July 10th • 6:30 PM ET / 11:30 PM IST via Zoom
Session open to all, no registration required.
Click on this link to join the Zoom session
Find out about Solas Nua's Fiction Book Group and titles list
Join the Book Group's Facebook Group here!
In this beautiful story of adventure and survival from the New York Times bestselling author of Room, three men vow to leave the world behind them as they set out in a small boat for an island their leader has seen in a dream, with only faith to guide them.
In seventh-century Ireland, a scholar and priest called Artt has a dream telling him to leave the sinful world behind. Taking two monks—young Trian and old Cormac—he rows down the river Shannon in search of an isolated spot on which to found a monastery. Drifting out into the Atlantic, the three men find an impossibly steep, bare island inhabited by tens of thousands of birds, and claim it for God. In such a place, what will survival mean?
“HAVEN. In 7th C, #Ireland, three men set sail to a bird-thick island to find God. #EmmaDonoghue (ROOM) combines pressure-cooker intensity + radical isolation, to stunning effect. What is Divine Grace? Purity of soul? Virtue? Not what they think.”
— Margaret Atwood
“Told with the clarity of a fable, Haven transports us into territories unknown, where ‘fog makes an island of every man.’ Donoghue’s men of the cloth confront challenges that rattle not only their faith in God, but their faith in each other and in the natural world. This is a patient, thoughtful novel with much to say about spirituality, hope, and human failure, and about the miracle of mercy.”
— Esi Edugyan, Giller Prize-winning author of Washington Black
“Haven is a beautiful and timely novel about isolation, passion and the conflict between obedience and self-preservation. The island setting and the characters stayed with me long after I finished reading.”
— Sarah Moss, author of Summerwater
About the Author
Emma Donoghue was born in Dublin in 1969, she is an Irish emigrant twice over: she spent eight years in Cambridge doing a PhD in eighteenth-century literature before moving to London, Ontario, where she lives with her partner and their two children. She also migrates between genres, writing literary history, biography, stage and radio plays as well as fairy tales and short stories. She is best known for her novels, which range from the historical (The Wonder, Frog Music, Slammerkin, Life Mask, Landing, The Sealed Letter) to the contemporary (Stir-Fry, Hood, Landing). Her international bestseller Room was a New York Times Best Book of 2010 and was a finalist for the Man Booker, Commonwealth, and Orange Prizes.
All events are listed in Eastern Time and Irish Standard Time.
