'Myles Foley gripped my soaked jumper. Before his ship sank he was a Nazi: now he's a drowning sailor. Out here, we are all sailors. Your father and grandfather understood that. Are you going to disgrace their memory?'

Part historical fiction, part extraordinary coming-of-age tale, The Lonely Sea and Sky charts the maiden voyage of fourteen-year-old Jack Roche aboard a tiny Wexford ship, the Kerlogue, on a treacherous wartime journey to Portugal. After his father's ship is sunk on this same route, Jack must go to sea to support his family swapping Wexford's small streets for Lisbon's vibrant boulevards: where every foreigner seems to be a refugee or a spy, and where he falls under the spell of Katerina, a Czech girl surviving on her wits. Bolger's new novel is based on a real-life rescue in 1943, when the Kerlogue's crew risked their lives to save 168 drowning German sailors - members of the navy that had killed Jack's father. Forced to choose who to save and who to leave behind, the Kerlogue grows so dangerously overloaded that no one knows if they will survive amid the massive Biscay waves. A brilliant portrayal of those unarmed Irish ships that sailed alone through hazardous waters; of young romance and a boy encountering a world where every experience is intense and dangerous, this is Bolger's most spellbinding novel, and the work of a master storyteller who is one of Ireland's best-known novelists, playwrights and poets.

Dermot Bolger
Born in Dublin in 1959, the novelist, playwright and poet Dermot Bolger is one of Ireland’s best-known writers. His fourteen novels include The Journey Home, A Second Life, Tanglewood, The Lonely Sea and Sky and An Ark of Light. In 2020 he published his first collection of short stories, Secrets Never Told. His debut play, The Lament for Arthur Cleary, received the Samuel Beckett Award. His numerous other plays include The Ballymun Trilogy, charting forty years of life in a Dublin working-class suburb; and most recently, Last Orders at the Dockside and an adaptation of James Joyce’s Ulysses, both staged by the Abbey Theatre. His ninth poetry collection, The Venice Suite: A Voyage Through Loss, appeared in 2012. He devised the best-selling collaborative novels Finbar’s Hotel and Ladies Night at Finbar’s Hotel, and edited numerous anthologies, including The Picador Book of Contemporary Irish Fiction.

A former Writer Fellow at Trinity College Dublin, Bolger writes for Ireland’s leading newspapers, and in 2012 was named Commentator of the Year at the NNI Journalism Awards. In 2021 he received The Lawrence O’Shaughnessy Award for Poetry. His tenth poetry collection, Other People's Lives, was published by New Island in 2022.