CROWE'S REQUIEM tells the story of John Crowe, a young man born into a village without any apparent history or contact with the outside world. Coming under the tutelage of his mad, beloved grandfather, Crowe is introduced to an existence he feels compelled to understand but is doomed forever to find elusive and mystifying. Breaking free of the old man's spell - drifting through the city hoping to complete his education - he embarks on a sudden, erotic affair with Marian, a young woman with a broken claim to divinity. Unable to see himself except through a prison of fictions, Crowe's life begins to escape him. Love story and gothic fairy tale, teeming with ghosts, sorcerors and vagrants, CROWE'S REQUIEM is in eerie and treacherous meditation on the nature of storytelling by one of Ireland's finest new writers.

Mike McCormack comes from the west of Ireland and currently lives in Galway. His first book,Getting it in the Head,was published in 1996 and won various awards, including the Rooney Prize.