City of the Tribes

These stories, rich with the passion and drama which characterises all of Walter Macken's writing, were conceived by the author as a thematic collection, providing a stunning evocation of the life and people of Galway in the 1940s. They document a time and place, yet they also have a timeless appeal in their portrayal of the people of the city whom Macken knew and loved so well. Full of insight and humour, they do not romanticise the past; rather they celebrate the qualities of ordinary people in their struggles with poverty, with political conservatism and with the sea, ever-present elements in the life of the city of the tribes. Walter Macken has long been one of Ireland's most popular writers. A novelist who defined in fiction the world of the 'plain people' of the west of Ireland, he was a master of the short story. First published posthumously in 1997, these magnificent stories are now brought back to life in the Modern Irish Classics series.

Walter Macken was born in Galway in 1915. A prolific writer, Macken wrote numerous short stories, articles, plays and children's books, in addition to his ten novels. Much of his early life was bound up with the theatre. A talented actor and playwright, he was involved in the production of some seventy-seven plays between 1939 and 1947 alone, before becoming Assistant Manager and Artistic Advisor with the Abbey Theatre in the 1960s. Following his onstage success, Macken was offered an enormous sum of money to star in a US-based film production. He refused, saying he had to 'go home to finish a novel'. That novel became The Bogman (1952), and six further novels would follow. He died in 1967 in his native Galway at the age of just fifty-one.