This Plague of Souls

Mike McCormack’s first novel since the single-sentence Booker-listed literary sensation Solar Bones, winner of the Goldsmith’s Prize, the BGE Irish Book of the Year Award, and the International Dublin Literary Award


Exchanging the cascading lyricism of Solar Bones for a terse and brooding noir style, This Plague of Souls was named a most anticipated book of 2023 by The Guardian, The Irish Times, and The New Statesman

After a period of imprisonment, Nealon returns to an empty house in the west of Ireland to find his wife and young son missing.  Then he gets a call from a man who claims to know what’s happened to them—a man who’ll tell Nealon all he needs to know in return for a single meeting. 

In a hotel lobby, in the shadow of an unfolding terrorist attack, Nealon and the man embark on a conversation shot through with secrets and unknown dangers, a verbal game of cat and mouse that ranges from Nealon’s past and crimes to Ireland’s place in the world order to the location of his family. This Plague of Souls is another ambitious and formally daring masterwork from one of the most exciting novelists working today.

Mike McCormack is an award-winning novelist and short story writer from the West of Ireland. His work includes Getting It in the Head, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year; Notes from a Coma, which was shortlisted for the Irish Book of the Year Award; Forensic Songs; and Solar Bones, which won the Goldsmiths Prize, the BGE Irish Book of the Year Award, and was nominated for the Man Booker Prize. He was also awarded the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature and a Civitella Ranieri Fellowship. He lives in Galway.