Nobber
- Author Oisín Fagan
- Narrator Niall Buggy
- Publisher John Murray Press
- Run Time 9 hours and 1 minute
- Format Audio
- Genre Modern and contemporary fiction.
Titles Purchased
- 1-5
- 6-10
- 11-15
- 16-20
- Over 20
Price p/Title
- €9.95
- €8.95
- €7.95
- €6.95
- €5.95
Listen to a sample
What to expect
SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOLLINGER EVERYMAN WODEHOUSE PRIZE
An ambitious noble and his three serving men travel through the Irish countryside in the stifling summer of 1348, using the advantage of the plague which has collapsed society to buy up large swathes of property and land. They come upon Nobber, a tiny town, whose only living habitants seem to be an egotistical bureaucrat, his volatile wife, a naked blacksmith, and a beautiful Gaelic hostage. Meanwhile, a band of marauding Gaels are roaming around, using the confusion of the sickness to pillage and reclaim lands that once belonged to them.
As these groups converge upon the town, the habitants, who up until this point have been under strict curfew, begin to stir from their dwellings, demanding answers from the intruders. A deadly stand-off emerges from which no one will escape unscathed.
'A dark and bloody tale, well leavened with bone-dry humour, and with a dramatic climax that has about it the flavour of a Jacobean tragedy' Guardian
'A writer out to do whatever the hell he wants . . . a grisly, gross-out slice of medieval life and death, it's vigorously, writhingly itself, spilling out of any box you put it in' Observer
'Nobber is hallucinatory and sly, conjuring a densely strange and savagely captivating world. There are lots of novels, and there are lots of novels that are all much alike, but there is nothing like Nobber' Colin Barrett
'A skilled storyteller with a rich command of language and rare comedic flair' Irish Times
(P)2020 Hodder & Stoughton Limited
Critics Review
-
Plague-ridden, trippy and violent, it’s uniquely told and full of startling images
Observer, Books of the Year -
The wildest novel I read all year was easily Nobber, an eye-poppingly anarchic tale of greed and gore in a medieval Irish village struck by the Black Death
Daily Mail, Books of the Year -
A tremendously engaging and fun read . . . a crazed, quixotic odyssey
Kevin Barry -
Nobber is hallucinatory and sly, conjuring a densely strange and savagely captivating world. There are lots of novels, and there are lots of novels that are all much alike, but there is nothing like Nobber
Colin Barrett -
Amid a strange, dark tale come glimpses of a striking new talent
The Times -
Pestilence, the Black Death and comedy combine to bemusing and occasionally potent effect in this debut novel from the rising star of Oisin Fagan . . . Nobber is a lively and mischievous work that does a wonderful job of painting pictures for us of abject horror and suffering right before turning them over on to their backs to reveal soft comedic underbellies
Irish Independent
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