Odran Yates enters Clonliffe Seminary in 1972 after his mother informs him that he has a
vocation to the priesthood. He goes in full of ambition and hope dedicated to his studies and
keen to make friends. Forty years later Odran's devotion has been challenged by the
revelations that have shattered the Irish people's faith in the church. He has seen friends
stand trial colleagues jailed the lives of young parishioners destroyed and has become
nervous of venturing out in public for fear of disapproving stares and insulting remarks. But
when a family tragedy opens wounds from his past he is forced to confront the demons that have
raged within a once respected institution and recognise his own complicity in their
propagation. It has taken John Boyne fifteen years and twelve novels to write about his home
country of Ireland but he has done so now in his most powerful novel to date a novel about
blind dogma and moral courage and about the dark places where the two can meet. At once
courageous and intensely personal A History of Loneliness confirms Boyne as one of the most
searching chroniclers of his generation.
