Book Profile
It was February 2020 when Ed O’Loughlin unexpectedly heard that Charlotte, a friend from the old days, had just died young and before her time. He realised that he was being led to reappraise his life, his family and his career as a foreign correspondent and novelist in a new, colder light.
This search for meaning becomes the driving theme of O’Loughlin’s year of confinement. The result is a haunting examination of the author’s early life and love, the journalists and photographers with whom he covered wars in Africa and the Middle East, the suicide of his brother, his new work as an author, a family home on the edge of a graveyard, and the mysteries of memory, ageing and loss.
Author Profile
ED O’LOUGHLIN was born in Toronto,
Canada, and grew up in Kildare town, Ireland.
After studying English at Trinity College Dublin,
he worked as a reporter. His first novel, Not
Untrue & Not Unkind was longlisted for the
Man Booker Prize 2009 and shortlisted for the
Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award.
His second novel, Toploader, a darkly comic
vision of the ‘war against terror’, was published
by Quercus in 2011. His third novel, Minds
of Winter (2016), was a finalist for the Giller
Prize and longlisted for the Sir Walter Scott
Prize for historical fiction. His fourth novel, This
Eden, a tech thriller, was published in 2021.
He lives in Dublin with his wife Nuala Haughey
and two children.