About this item
At the heart of every life there lies a secret.Alex Smyth, of Irish birth but living for many years with his wife in rural Canada, receives a trout fly in the mail, with no message and no return address. It stirs a fear that he is being stalked after the publication of his most recent book, and it awakens in him deeply buried, inchoate memories from his childhood in Ireland, before he was old enough to understand the adult world around him. It also evokes the guilt that he may have murdered a man, a feeling so strong it changes him and threatens his marriage. Alex has no choice but to return alone to Ireland and his estranged father, to try and begin to solve the mystery.A novel of great literary beauty structured as a tense psychological thriller, The Trout is a tale of predators and prey, deception, and the hidden crimes that can shape a life. Alex's physician father loved to fish and imbued in him a deep knowledge of the sport. In brief passages, this fisherman's lore periodically comes to the surface and resonates deeply with the dark mystery at the core of the novel.
About the Author
Peter Cunningham is an Irish novelist. He grew up in Waterford. His first novel,'Noble Lord', was a thriller, written under the pseudonym, Peter Lauder. In 2003, 'The Taoiseach', dealt with current Irish political events, based on the life of Irish premier Charles Haughey. The novel was a bestseller and is currently in development as a 6-part mini-series for television.In 2010, a satirical novel dealing with the collapse of Ireland's economy, 'Capital Sins', was published. His novel, 'The Sea and the Silence' was awarded the Prix de l'Europe in 2013. 'The Trout', published in 2016, was described by the New York Times as a novel written 'with a deftness and grace that summon the truth from the depths of the past.'In 2017, 'Acts of Allegiance' was awarded a starred review from Publishers Weekly and described as 'remarkable'. The novel has been nominated for the Dublin Literary International Award 2019.Cunningham novels are said to fuse political material with psychological realism and a nascent, lyrical sensitivity to place. in this way he has won an international reputation as a writer of highly crafted plots and enigmatic dreaminess. Peter Cunningham is a member of Aosdána, the Irish academy of arts and letters, and lives in County Kildare, Ireland.
