Tim Robinson, who established himself as Ireland's most brilliant living non-fiction writer with the two-volume Stones of Aran, moved from Aran to Connemara nearly twenty years ago.

This book is the result of his extraordinary engagement with the mountains, bogs and shorelines of the region, and with its folklore and its often terrible history: a work as beautiful and surprising as the place it attempts to describe.

Chosen as a book of the year by Iain Sinclair, Robert Macfarlane and Colm Toibin

'One of the greatest writers of lands ... No one has disentangled the tales the stones of Ireland have to tell so deftly and retold them so beautifully' Fintan O'Toole

'Dazzling ... an indubitable classic' Giles Foden, Conde Nast Traveller

'He is that rarest of phenomena, a scientist and an artist, and his method is to combine scientific rigour with artistic reverie in a seamless blend that both informs and delights' John Banville

'One of contemporary Ireland's finest literary stylists' Joseph O'Connor, Guardian