Nobber, Oisin Fagan
Nobber, Oisin Fagan
List: $24.99 | Sale: $17.50
Club: $12.49

Nobber
A zany, plague-ridden tale of greed and gore

Author: Oisín Fagan

Narrator: Niall Buggy

Unabridged: 9 hr

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: John Murray

Published: 07/14/2020


Synopsis

LONGLISTED FOR THE DESMOND ELLIOTT PRIZE

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOLLINGER EVERYMAN WODEHOUSE PRIZE
An ambitious noble and his three serving men travel through the Irish countryside in the stifling summer of 1348, using the advantage of the plague which has collapsed society to buy up large swathes of property and land. They come upon Nobber, a tiny town, whose only living habitants seem to be an egotistical bureaucrat, his volatile wife, a naked blacksmith, and a beautiful Gaelic hostage. Meanwhile, a band of marauding Gaels are roaming around, using the confusion of the sickness to pillage and reclaim lands that once belonged to them.

As these groups converge upon the town, the habitants, who up until this point have been under strict curfew, begin to stir from their dwellings, demanding answers from the intruders. A deadly stand-off emerges from which no one will escape unscathed.

'A dark and bloody tale, well leavened with bone-dry humour, and with a dramatic climax that has about it the flavour of a Jacobean tragedy' Guardian

'A writer out to do whatever the hell he wants . . . a grisly, gross-out slice of medieval life and death, it's vigorously, writhingly itself, spilling out of any box you put it in' Observer

'Nobber is hallucinatory and sly, conjuring a densely strange and savagely captivating world. There are lots of novels, and there are lots of novels that are all much alike, but there is nothing like Nobber' Colin Barrett

'A skilled storyteller with a rich command of language and rare comedic flair' Irish Times

(P)2020 Hodder & Stoughton Limited

About Oisín Fagan

Oisín Fagan is the author of Hostages, a collection of stories, and Nobber, his debut novel which was longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize, shortlisted for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize, and was named a Book of the Year by the Guardian and the Daily Mail.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Paul on December 03, 2022

William realises, with a great and defeating disappointment, that he has met yet another insane person. A grim, sobering, but highly erudite and mentally stimulating read in the light of Covid-19, as 670 years earlier, flocks of corvids haunt a plague-ridden Ireland, and some beasts of the human kin......more

Goodreads review by Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer on December 03, 2020

Now longlisted for the 2020 Desmond Elliott Prize for debut fiction. Intransigent chaos has blurred man into animal, turned law into farce, shifted man into corpse, yoked child into slave, disposed of all previous hierarchies more ruthlessly and indiscriminately than any uprising has ever done, a......more

Goodreads review by Doug on February 10, 2020

4.5, rounded up. What a wild, strange trip it's been! Fagan's assured debut novel abounds with imagination and gorgeous, precise prose, indelible characters, and some much needed deadpan humor amongst even more medieval grotesquerie. I usually have a very low tolerance for such, especially any violen......more

Goodreads review by Dax on October 25, 2022

This one was pretty wild. The novel is set during the bubonic plague of mid 14th Century, in a town called Nobber. People are holed up in their homes (sound familiar?), and as their relatives start to die, it seems their mental health comes into question as well (sound familiar?). Then we've got a h......more


Quotes

Plague-ridden, trippy and violent, it's uniquely told and full of startling images Observer, Books of the Year

The wildest novel I read all year was easily Nobber, an eye-poppingly anarchic tale of greed and gore in a medieval Irish village struck by the Black Death Daily Mail, Books of the Year

A tremendously engaging and fun read . . . a crazed, quixotic odyssey Kevin Barry

Nobber is hallucinatory and sly, conjuring a densely strange and savagely captivating world. There are lots of novels, and there are lots of novels that are all much alike, but there is nothing like Nobber Colin Barrett

Amid a strange, dark tale come glimpses of a striking new talent The Times

Pestilence, the Black Death and comedy combine to bemusing and occasionally potent effect in this debut novel from the rising star of Oisin Fagan . . . Nobber is a lively and mischievous work that does a wonderful job of painting pictures for us of abject horror and suffering right before turning them over on to their backs to reveal soft comedic underbellies Irish Independent

Utterly original, yet reminiscent of Flann O'Brien or Eimar O'Duffy. Nobber is the work of a fierce imagination and an even fiercer pen Meath Chronicle

A writer out to do whatever the hell he wants . . . a grisly, gross-out slice of medieval life and death, it's vigorously, writhingly itself, spilling out of any box you put it in Observer

All tremendously good fun: if noir whimsy and highfalutin' bawdiness are your thing, you will find a chortle-worthy moment on every couple of pages . . . Fagan is a skilled storyteller with a rich command of language and rare comedic flair Irish Times

A bloody and brilliant first novel . . . a dark and bloody tale, well leavened with bone-dry humour, and with a dramatic climax that has about it the flavour of a Jacobean tragedy Guardian, Book of the Day


Awards

  • Desmond Elliott Prize
  • Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction