Twenty Years A-Growing by Maurice O'Sullivan

Maurice O'Sullivan was born on the Great Blasket in 1904, and Twenty Years A-Growing tells the story of his youth and of a way of life that belonged to the Middle Ages. He wrote for his own pleasure and for the entertainment of his friends without any thought of a wider public; his style is derived from folk tales that he heard from his grandfather and sharpened by his own lively imagination.

The Blasket Islands are three miles off Ireland's Dingle Peninsula. Until their evacuation just after the Second World War, the lives of the 150 or so Blasket Islanders had remained unchanged for centuries. (publisher blurb)