The Kybe is a vivid historical novel of passion and conflict, where the lives of ordinary people unfold against the great sweep of history. Set in early nineteenth-century North County Dublin, it follows a close-knit community whose lives are bound together by work, faith, custom, and hardship. At its heart is Eileen Mullen, a woman of strength and complexity, torn between her devotion to her husband and children and her powerful attraction to a foreign soldier.
Richly detailed and immersive, the novel recreates a vanished world in striking detail - from daily labour and village customs to shipwrecks, local dances, a football match, and the haunting events of Waterloo.
In The Kybe, Hugh Fitzgerald Ryan brings a lost community vividly to life in a compelling and deeply human story.
