South | Premium

A modern classic work of Irish literature, this award-winning novel is an exploration of love, art and identity.This was the night train to Barcelona, some hours before the dawn. This was 1950, late September. I had left my husband. I had left my home. Katherine Proctor has dared to leave her family in Ireland and reach out for a new life. Determined to become an artist, she flees to Spain, where she meets Miguel, a passionate man who has fought for his own freedoms. They retreat to the quiet intensity of the mountains and begin to build a life together.But as Miguels past catches up with him, Katherine too is forced to re-examine her relationships: with her lover, her painting and the homeland she only thought she knew. . .The South was Colm Tóibín’s debut novel, winning the Irish Times First Fiction Award in 1991.’An imaginative, deeply felt and evocative tale’The Sunday Times’Colm Tóibín writes prose of a heartbreaking beauty’Hilary MantelPart of the Picador Collection, a series showcasing the best of modern literature.