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The Many-Coloured Land: A Return to Ireland

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Family secrets unravel through an Irish-Australian lens.

If you're drawn to tales that weave personal history with cultural identity, "The Many-Coloured Land" is a call to the heart. Koch guides you through the layers of his ancestry, blending the gripping narrative of a convict's journey with the discovery of familial secrets. It's a book that connects you with the struggles and resilience of past generations, making it a compelling read for anyone interested in the complexities of heritage.

Note: While we do our best to ensure the accuracy of cover images, ISBNs may at times be reused for different editions of the same title which may hence appear as a different cover.
Just Arrived

The Many-Coloured Land: A Return to Ireland

Regular price $13.90
Unit price
per
Compare to estimated retail price: S$22.50  
Condition guide

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ISBN: 9780330487283
Publisher: Picador
Date of Publication: 2004-04-01
Format: Paperback
Related Collections: Biographies & Memoirs, Travel
Goodreads rating: 3.82
(rated by 61 readers)

Description

The Many-Coloured Land is an evocative, intelligent and thought-provoking journey from the pen of a true storyteller. 'To be one third Prussian by descent, another third English, and a final third Irish, is a situation fraught with ambiguities. This has been my fate, and I don't rail against having been dealt this hand; I've obviously had to make what I could of it. But it would have been much simpler, I've often thought, to have been able to choose the Irish third alone...' As a youngster, Christopher Koch was intrinsically aware of his mixed heritage. When Margaret O'Meara, his Tipperary-born, rebellious great-great-grandmother, boarded the Tasmania to travel as a convict to the southern hemisphere, there began a new dimension within Christopher's family tree; a secretive past that his mother refused to discuss. Many years later it was in Tasmania that the young Christopher grew up, and here that he began his lifelong quest to better understand his ancestral roots, a quest which rears its head in his travels around Ireland in the 1990s. As Christopher tours modern day Ireland he glimpses signs of tradition amongst the variegated landscape and, with his yearning for meaning, is reminded at every turn of the political and literary figures who have shaped its history. He traces the paths of Yeats and Michael Collins and talks to the IRA's leading biographer. He also links north with south as he recalls his own youth and those figures who influenced him. Over his shoulder always is the young Margaret O'Meara, the rebel whose mysterious adventures placed the first seeds of curiosity in his mind.
 

Family secrets unravel through an Irish-Australian lens.

If you're drawn to tales that weave personal history with cultural identity, "The Many-Coloured Land" is a call to the heart. Koch guides you through the layers of his ancestry, blending the gripping narrative of a convict's journey with the discovery of familial secrets. It's a book that connects you with the struggles and resilience of past generations, making it a compelling read for anyone interested in the complexities of heritage.

Note: While we do our best to ensure the accuracy of cover images, ISBNs may at times be reused for different editions of the same title which may hence appear as a different cover.