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The Dead Republic
The Dead Republic
Dec 30, 2025 1:35 AM

Author:Roddy Doyle

The Dead Republic

We last saw Henry Smart, his leg severed in an accident with a railway boxcar, crawl into the Utah desert to die - only to be discovered by John Ford, who's there shooting his latest Western.

The Dead Republic opens in 1951. Henry is returning to Ireland for the first time since his escape in 1922. With him are the stars of Ford's latest film, John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara, and the famous director himself, who has tried to suck the soul out of Henry and turn it into Hollywood gold-dust.

Ten years later Henry is in Dublin, working in Ratheen as a school caretaker. When he is caught in a bomb blast, he loses his leg for the second time. He is claimed as a hero, and before long Henry will discover he has other uses too, when the peace process begins in deadly secrecy...

Reviews

Brilliant

—— Mail on Sunday

Told with pace and verve and bitter, black humour... Magnificent

—— Financial Times

Doyle's tenth novel might be called The Dead Republic, but its vision of what Smart calls "the green thing" is as alive as any he has given us

—— Independent on Sunday

There is lovely, brutal detail, as well as a grand swoop over the timeline of Ireland and America, just like the kind of film they just don't make anymore

—— Financial Times

This is Ireland's most famous living writer tackling one of the most crucial periods in history

—— Guardian

Reading it is like spending time with a favourite uncle whose anecdotes you'd happily listen to over and over again because...it makes you laugh

—— Alice Fisher , The Observer

Having made it to number two in Esquire's funniest books list, Jerome K Jerome's comic tale of boat-bound idlers is reissued this month, with 30 charming illustrations by a certain Vic Reeves

—— Esquire

A lovely jacketed hardback... Reeves captures absolutely Jerome's droll, gentle and thoroughly English sense of the absurd... perfect alfresco spring reading.

—— Claire Allfrey , Metro

Go on a journey without leaving your chair.

—— Harper’s Bazaar

One of the 'classics' of English humorous literature

—— Contemporary Review

A wide-ranging, energetic satire on what used to be called Fleet Street

—— Times Literary Supplement

When high meets lowbrow, comedy ensues, but McAfee's novel is not without serious intent. She deftly peels away her characters' pretensions, forcing readers to examine their own prejudices.

—— Scotsman

Sparky tragicomedy

—— Daily Mail

McAfee is a superlative writer and plotter...McAfee has produced a locus classicus of Fleet Street

—— Rachel Johnson , The Lady

Darkly funny but also a very timely read

—— Stylist

[A] satirical debut about the newspaper business

—— Stand Point

A cutting, hilarious portrait of British print journalism... An entirely human story that brilliantly recreates and analyses the recent past

—— The Times

Those gripped by the escalating News International scandal might enjoy the latest newspaper novel Annalena McAfee's The Spoiler

—— Glasgow Herald

authentic, entertaining and draws on her own experience as an arts journalist

—— Daily Express

The Spoiler - set in the halcyon days before phone hacking - was one of the funniest and sharpest fleet street novels in years.

—— David Robson , Sunday Telegraph Seven

McAfee - herself a former journalist - evokes two distinct eras and styles of journalism, that of fearless frontline reportage and that of its successor: style-oriented, celebrity-obsessed features coverage... This is a pacy read that leaves little doubt in the reader's mind that one school of journalism deserves more mourning than the other

—— Alex Clark , Guardian

Marvellous satire...the novel is cunningly plotted and satisfyingly nuanced

—— Independent on Sunday

If the peek into the world of newspaper journalism afforded by the Leveson inquiry has you gasping for more, then this timely paperback release is perfect...a fiendishly funny (and frighteningly plausible) world of fiddled expenses and suspect tactics

—— Shortlist

Thoroughly enjoyable behind-the-scenes expose of an ambitious celebrity journalist's attempt to nail the scoop of her life

—— Metro

This is the paperback edition. The hardback appeared before the News Corporation bosses were dragged into the Commons. McAfee was either very prescient or close to the action, holding her fictional hacks to account for printing false stories gleaned from disreputable sources

—— Julia Fernandez , Time Out
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