The Year of the French

ยท New York Review of Books
ืกืคืจ ื“ื™ื’ื™ื˜ืœื™
544
ื“ืคื™ื
ื›ืฉื™ืจ

ืžื™ื“ืข ืขืœ ื”ืกืคืจ ื”ื“ื™ื’ื™ื˜ืœื™ ื”ื–ื”

Winner of the National Book Critics Award for Fiction

This โ€œclassic of historical fictionโ€ takes readers to 18th-century Ireland when French troops supported Irish rebels in their struggle for independence from Britain (The Times, London).

In 1798, Irish patriots, committed to freeing their country from England, landed with a company of French troops in County Mayo, in westernmost Ireland. They were supposed to be an advance guard, followed by other French ships with the leader of the rebellion, Wolfe Tone. Briefly they triumphed, raising hopes among the impoverished local peasantry and gathering a group of supporters. But before long the insurgency collapsed in the face of a brutal English counterattack.

Very few books succeed in registering the sudden terrible impact of historical events; Thomas Flanaganโ€™s is one. Subtly conceived, masterfully paced, with multiple narrators and a wide and memorable cast of characters, The Year of the French brings to life peasants and landlords, Protestants and Catholics, along with old and abiding questions of secular and religious commitments, empire, occupation, and rebellion. It is quite simply a great historical novel.
ย 
โ€œI havenโ€™t so enjoyed a historical novel since The Charterhouse of Parma and War and Peace.โ€ โ€” John Leonard, The New York Times

ืขืœ ื”ืžื—ื‘ืจ

Thomas Flanagan (1923โ€“2002), the grandson of Irish immigrants, grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut, where he ran the school newspaper with his friend Truman Capote. Flanagan attended Amherst College (with a two-year hiatus to serve in the Pacific Fleet) and earned his Ph.D. from Columbia University, where he studied under Lionel Trilling while also writing stories forย Ellery Queenโ€™s Mystery Magazine.ย In 1959, he published an important scholarly work,ย The Irish Novelists, 1800 to 1850, and the next year he moved to Berkeley, where he was to teach English and Irish literature at the University of California for many years. In 1978 he took up a post at the State University of New York at Stonybrook, from which he retired in 1996. Flanagan and his wife Jean made annual trips to Ireland, where he struck up friendships with many writers, including Benedict Kiely and Seamus Heaney, whom he in turn helped bring to the United States. His intimate knowledge of Irelandโ€™s history and literature also helped to inspire his trilogy of historical novels, starting withย The Year of the Frenchย (1979, winner of the National Criticsโ€™ Circle award for fiction, reissued by NYRB Classics in 2004) and continuing withThe Tenants of Timeย (1988) andย The End of the Huntย (1994). He is also the author of There You Are: Writings on Irish and American Literature and Historyย (2004).ย Flanagan was a frequent contributor to many publications, includingย The New York Review of Books,ย The New York Times, andย The Kenyon Review.ย 

Seamus Deane, formerly Professor of English and American Literature at University College, Dublin, is now Keough Professor of Irish Studies at the University of Notre Dame. Among his books areย Selected Poems,ย Celtic Revivals,ย Strange Country: Ireland and Modernity, and the novelย Reading in the Dark. He was General Editor of the three-volumeย Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing.

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