The foremost account of Ireland's cultural and spiritual heritage
In 1907 J. M. Synge achieved both notoriety and lasting fame with The Playboy of the Western World. The Aran Islands, published in the same year, records his visits to the islands in 1898-1901, when he was gathering the folklore and anecdotes out of which he forged The Playboy and his other major dramas. Yet this book is much more than a stage in the evolution of Synge the dramatist. As Tim Robinson explains in his introduction, -If Ireland is intriguing as being an island off the west of Europe, then...

'Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage' is Tim Robinson's epic exploration of the desolate, storm-lashed limestone rocks which have haunted generations of Irish writers.