"When we first met, I was a child, and she had been dead for centuries."
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist
Paris Review Staff Pick
A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2021
A New York Times Critics' Choice, Top Books of 2021
Winner: James Tait Black Award
Winner: Book of the Year, Irish Book Awards
Winner: Foyles Non-Fiction Book of the Year
Kirkus Books Best of the Year
Finalist: Rathbones Folio Prize, Republic of Consciousness Prize, Gordon Burn Prize
A Book of the Year in The Guardian, The Observer, New York Times, NPR, Globe and Mail, The New Statesman, The Irish Times, The White Review
"ardent, shape-shifting... a hybrid of essay, biography, autofiction, scholarship... She pieces together Ní Chonaill’s life as if she is darning a hem, keeping the story from unraveling further." - Parul Sehgal, New York Times
"connecting the bodily details of mothering and erotic love to linguistic hierarchies and erasures, this book creates its own form: a critical biography of the body, of bloodshed and babies born, of the word made flesh.' - NPR Best Books of 2021
“incandescent, uncategorisable… a text that glints with treasures” - The Observer
"Ní Ghríofa’s essayistic and intimate style recalls the inter-disciplinary perambulations of W.G. Sebald and the uncompromising feminism of Maggie Nelson.” - Chicago Review of Books
“genre-defying...captivatingly original“ - The Guardian, Best Books of the Year
“A powerful, bewitching blend of memoir and literary investigation … Ní Ghríofa is deeply attuned to the gaps, silences and mysteries in women’s lives, and the book reveals, perhaps above all else, how we absorb what we love—a child, a lover, a poem—and how it changes us from the inside out.”— Nina McLaughlin, New York Times
"Ní Ghríofa is a poet through and through: in this prose work she writes lyrical sentences that make the physical world come alive... Metaphors and metonyms are her metier; omens and dreams are mirrors of deep mind." - The New York Review of Books
“Lush, lyrical prose that dazzles readers from the get-go… sumptuous, almost symphonic, in its intensity… As readers, we should be grateful for her boldness. Without it, we would not have had one of the best books of this dreadful year.” – The Sunday Times
"A fascinating hybrid work... Lyrical prose passages and moving introspection abound in this unique and beautiful book." - Kirkus starred review
"A Ghost in the Throat explores the ways a woman can both vanish and flourish into motherhood; heartfelt, open-ended, generous and wry, it is revelatory about bodies as well as books." - The Guardian
“In the work of the Irish writer Doireann Ní Ghríofa, history is amorphous, a living thing that frequently bleeds into or interrupts the lives of those in the present day. ” - The Paris Review
"Gorgeous... This book saved me this year." - Lauren Elkin, The White Review
“one of best books I’ve read in ages...unique and deeply moving.” - Nicola Sturgeon
“This exquisitely crafted memoir is written in blood and milk, and its publication marks an important event in the maturing of Irish literature… I grieved when I closed this book, and found the only remedy was to turn back to the first page, and begin this masterpiece over again.” – The Sunday Business Post
“A book like this comes along once every few years and obliterates every clear definition of genre and form. I mean no exaggeration here: A Ghost in the Throat is astounding and utterly fresh… This is no tepid and stuffy reimagining of an 18th-century life. It is borne of great personal scholarship, without ever seeming polemical. This book has a long life ahead of it, burning bright and inspiring many.” – The Irish Independent
“there is something that sets A Ghost in the Throat apart, an otherworldliness or older-worldliness… strange and beautiful.” – The Irish Times
“a landmark in Irish writing... exhilarating... a sprawling interrogation of self and of womanhood that is unlike anything else.” - The Stinging Fly
