John Lee

Land John Lee

O'Flaherty's 13th novel is about the Irish land uprisings during the time of Parnell. Set in Co. Mayo during the early days of the 19th-century Land War, this mighty epic of the Irish Land and People tells of the struggles between the British landlords and the Irish tenantry.

Liam O'Flaherty aka Liam Ó Flaithearta (1896-1984) was a significant Irish novelist and short story writer and a major figure in the Irish literary renaissance. O'Flaherty was the son of Maidhc Ó Flaithearta and Maggie Ganley of Gort na gCapall.

In 1908, at the age of 12, he went to Rockwell College. This was followed by enrollments at Holy Cross and University College, Dublin. He did not attend the first two schools for long. He had intended joining the priesthood, but in 1917 he left school and joined the Irish Guards under the name Bill Ganly. He served on the Western Front, where he was injured, and it is possible that the shell shock he suffered may have been responsible for the mental illness that became apparent in 1933.

After the war O'Flaherty left Ireland and moved to the United States, where he lived in Hollywood for a short time. The well-known director John Ford, a cousin, later turned Ó Flaithearta's novel The Informer into a film. Many of his works have the common theme of nature and Ireland. He was a distinguished short story writer, and some his best work in that genre was in Irish.