At Swim Two Boys

'Weren't you never out for an easy dip?' he asked . . . 'I don't mean the baths, I mean with a pal. For a lark like.'

Out at the Forty Foot, that great jut of Dublin rock where gentlemen bathe in the nude, two boys, Doyler and Jim, meet day after day. There they make a pact: that Doyler will teach Jim to swim, and in a year, they will swim to the Muglins rock to raise the Green and claim it for themselves. 

As a turbulent year drives inexorably towards the Easter Rising of 1916 and Ireland sets forth on a path to uncertain glory, a tender, secret love story unfolds. Written with verve and mastery in a modern Irish tradition descended from James Joyce and Flann O'Brien, At Swim, Two Boys is a shimmering novel of unforgettable ambition, intensity and humanity.