Jan Carson: Few and Far Between

From a “deeply talented” (The New York Times Book Review), award-winning writer comes an alternate history of Northern Ireland’s recent past

In 1958, a politician’s ludicrous proposal to create a seventh county for Northern Ireland by draining Lough Neagh—the largest lake in Ireland—was, quite understandably, never implemented. In Few and Far Between, Jan Carson imagines a timeline in which the scheme proceeded. When an archipelago emerges from the receding water, a utopian community establishes itself on the islands, hoping to escape the prejudices and dangers of Troubles-era Northern Ireland.