Flood Tide

Séamus Ó Néill

Summary

'Tonn Tuile (Flood Tide) is a truly exceptional novel in the context of Irish-language literature. Groundbreaking in its day simply because it deals with what we might call "normal people" ... It explores with delicate precision the death of romantic love and youthful dreams under (mostly) everyday pressures. Ordinary urban life was not a common subject in Irish-language 20th-century fiction. Ó Néill's style is simple, understated. He writes a lyrical, accessible prose. A little gem and my favourite novel as Gaeilge.' - Éilís Ní Dhuibhne
A landmark of mid-century Irish fiction – a marriage unravelling against the backdrop of a nation in studied neutrality, now available in English for the first time.
Dublin, August 1939. Liam, a journalist from Ulster, returns from his Rhine honeymoon with his Dublin bride, Eileen, just as the world tips into war. He is certain of two things: that he has married the woman he loves, and that his life as a writer is about to begin. Instead, the Emergency settles over daily life, and the marriage begins to unravel. Through family Christmas gatherings and a champagne-soaked night cycling home through a moonlit Dublin and a Gaeltacht stay that shatters his romantic vision of an all-Irish Ireland, Ó Néill builds a vivid portrait of a society at a crossroads – and of a man slowly discovering that the life he imagined and the life he is living have become two very different things.
Written in Irish in 1946, Tonn Tuile was one of the first novels to document Ireland's new urban Catholic middle class from the inside. Now translated into English for the first time by the author's daughter, Eithne O'Neill.

Available since: 07/03/2026.

Print length: 192 pages.

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