The End of the Hunt.

New York: Dutton, 1994. First edition of the final novel in the author's acclaimed trilogy. Octavo, original half cloth, cartographic endpapers. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the title page in the year of publication, "For Karl- with the very good wishes of Rob's friend, Tom Flanagan June 1994." Fine in a fine dust jacket. As in The Year of the French and The Tenants of Time, Thomas Flanagan has written a compelling historical novel about rebellion in Ireland, its causes and consequences, and what happens to people as their private lives are transformed by--indeed become--public events. Here he covers the years following 1916's Easter Rebellion (an event more important to Irish consciousness than World War I), which will culminate in the creation of an Irish Free State and the waging of brutal civil war. Flanagan gives us history as moments, some dull and some dangerous, in the lives of scores of people, some invented and some actual. At times we witness these moments vividly as they happen, or we may look back at them through the characters' memories as they try to understand what the moments really meant. Superlative reading on The Irish Question; few historical novels about any time or place are as rich and as rewarding as this one.