The Guide
Writing Dublin’s Famine story into Ireland’s history books
Books, films and plays have so far generally dealt with rural Ireland’s experience of the Irish Famine: Dublin and the Great Famine focuses on the effect the catastrophe had on the country’s capital
The Irish Famine occupies an important part of our cultural memory and has been vastly explored across the Irish arts. Books like Joseph O’Connor’s Star of the Sea turned the subject into bestselling material, while it has been the backdrop to several recent Irish films, most recently in Tomás Ó Súilleabháin’s Arracht and Sebastián Lelio’s The Wonder, based on Emma O’Donoghue’s 2016 novel, currently on general release. In the theatre, meanwhile, the Famine has served ...