Irish Journal

On finishing Heinrich Boll's observations of mid-1950s Ireland, a reader might well wonder how much of that place remains. Boll himself added an appendix remarking on the centuries-deep changes that had occurred only a decade hence. But the rain must still be there, and the green and dirty Liffey, and Yeats's grave, and good tea. Boll finds and describes the folkloric and picturesque in a way that dissipates all mists.