Join us on a literary world trip!
Add this book to bookshelf
Grey
Write a new comment Default profile 50px
Grey
Listen online to the first chapters of this audiobook!
All characters reduced
The Pilgrimage - cover
PLAY SAMPLE

The Pilgrimage

John Broderick, Colm Tóibín

Narrator Patrick Moy

Publisher: Tantor Audio

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

Summary

An erotic nightmare and classic of modern Irish literature. 
 
 
 
Wealthy and devout, Michael and Julia Glynn are the envy of their neighbors and the model Irish Catholic couple, bearing Michael's increasingly painful and crippling arthritis with stoicism. In hope of a miracle, their priest suggests a family pilgrimage to Lourdes. Yet these pious holiday plans are thrown into doubt when anonymous, obscene letters begin to arrive, full of terrible accusations. 
 
 
 
Banned in Ireland on its first publication in 1961, Broderick's debut arrived "like an incendiary device" (Sunday Independent). The Pilgrimage anticipated the deep shifts that would soon turn the country's theocratic society upside down. It is a darkly comic, blasphemous, and sexually charged chamber drama laying bare the hypocrisies of a small Irish town "as watchful as the jungle," and teetering on the brink of catastrophe. In the words of Colm Tóibín, in his foreword to this edition, The Pilgrimage "cleared a space in the jungle so that its wildness could be more easily seen." 
 
 
 
Contains mature themes.
Duration: about 6 hours (05:39:15)
Publishing date: 2025-05-06; Unabridged; Copyright Year: 2025. Copyright Statment: —