Said the Dead

From the author of A Ghost in the Throat, an unforgettable book - both history and ghost story - that will leave you gasping by its final page.

'There's magic in this one' Kevin Barry
'This book will be read for decades to come' Anne Enright
'Astonishing' Yiyun Li
'Nobody currently writing is pulling off sorcery like this' RTÉ

The more she learned, the more certain she became: this other world was alive and true and trembling, and very close to her own.

Now she had a secret

In the city of Cork, a derelict Victorian mental hospital is being converted into modern apartments. One passerby has always flinched as she passes the place. Had she lived in another time, she too might have found herself held within those walls.

Now, she notices a sign: FOR SALE.

It is the first of many signs. Guided by an irresistible impulse, she follows them. Soon, she is trespassing, stealing, absconding from the routine of mother, spouse, daughter, as she uncovers a chorus of startling voices: those of the women who knew the hospital best. They murmur from archives and old records. They haunt from stairwells and walls. In them - and in one figure in particular -- she may find meaning and solace, righteous anger, salvation even. Or her final vanishing?

A work of sublime intensity and tenderness, Said the Dead breaks the boundaries between worlds -- past and present, imagined and real, fact and fiction -- to make something new and lasting: an experience full of danger, full of love and full of truth.


'Incantatory . . . enthralling . . . an expansive work inspired by and composed of myriad ghosts . . . Richly evocative and affecting . . . the spirits it conjures up linger long after you've turned the final page.' Financial Times
'An entrancing book -- lyrical and propulsive, it sounds out the echoes of history and finds voices and images that are moving and indelible. Reading this book is like being put under a spell.' Seán Hewitt
'Extraordinary . . . intimately researched [and] wildly imaginative . . . Ní Ghríofa's treatment of the patients and their textual remains is never less than sensitive.' Guardian

Said the Dead was a no. 1 Irish Times bestseller w/e 30th June