Overview

"""In Ireland anything may happen to anyone anywhere and at any time, and it usually does."" The forces of evil have launched a determined offensive on the sanctified precincts of Clonmacnoise, and gain a bridgehead in the cell of Brother Fursey. But the hapless monk is so tongue-tied with fright that he cannot utter the necessary words of exorcism. When the other monks discover this, poor Fursey is expelled, and sets forth on the first stage of his travels accompanied by a fantastic procession of cacodemons, hippogriffs, imps, furies, and other dreadful creatures, not to mention the elegant gentleman in black who is their commander-in-chief. Reviewed in the Irish Times as ""wildly fantastic, intensely satirical, and wickedly comic"" and described by critic E. F. Bleiler as a ""landmark book in the history of fantasy"", Mervyn Wall's The Unfortunate Fursey remains a classic of modern Irish literature."

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9781783807673

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Reviews

Wildly fantastic, intensely satirical, and wickedly comic. - The Irish Times For anyone who doesn't know Fursey, this opportunity to do so is not to be missed. - Dublin Book Review I love this thing - a very funny 1946 novel about an Irish monk stumbling through a parade of supernatural adventures. If I wasn't doing Hellboy I think I'd be very happy spending a couple years drawing an adaptation of this. - Mike Mignola Irish novelists of the last century generally eschewed outright fantasy, with the honourable exceptions of Flann O'Brien's wilder flights of fancy, and the neglected work of comic genius that is Mervyn Wall's The Unfortunate Fursey. - John Connolly The Fursey books are essentially freewheeling fantasy with satirical understones . . . Wall writes with elegance and the occasional poetic flourish; his world has its rules, but they are not the rules, as we conceive them, of our modern world. - Wormwood This is a book that should be far more widely cherished . . . an extremely readable, entertaining and pertinent novel. - Dublin Inquirer

Author Information

Mervyn Wall (1908-1997) was born in Dublin. He was educated in both Ireland and Germany, and obtained his B.A. from the National University of Ireland in 1928. After fourteen years in the Civil Service, he joined Radio Éireann as Programme Officer. In 1957 he became Secretary of the Arts Council of Ireland, retiring in 1975. Known during his lifetime as a broadcaster and critic, he is best remembered for his two satirical fantasies set in medieval Ireland, The Unfortunate Fursey (1946) and The Return of Fursey (1948).

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