Island Cross-Talk

Written between 1919 and 1923, this was the first book to come out of the Blasket Islands - that tiny, remote community off the west coast of Kerry. Drawing on a rich oral tradition, it sowed the seeds for the extraordinary flowering of literature that made the islands famous throughout the world.These sketches from Tom O'Crohan's diary evoke the beauty and the dangers of the Great Blasket and the sea, and recall the wit and the friendships that alleviated the hardships and the hunger. In 1953 the Great Blasket was abandoned to the seagulls and the silence. Tomas O'Crohan composed his own epitaph, and that of his community, when he wrote 'the like of us will never be again'.