With the year nearing its ending, it is time again to announce the book chosen for Dublin: One City One Book Festival 2017. Echoland by Joe Joyce will be the choice for reading. This year the festival took on a slight different approach to the usual festival and changed to the Two Cities One Book Festival, to help celebrate the commemorative year.
The author of Echoland, Joe Joyce, says: “I’m delighted and honoured that Echoland will be Dublin’s One City One Book 2017. The city is an integral part of the book, not just the backdrop to a spy story. As I was writing it, I was very conscious of the hardships and great dangers of the Emergency period, faced, as always by Dubliners, with resilience and wit.”
Joyce is a Dubliner and worked as a journalist for the Irish Times, The Guardian, and Reuters. Echoland is the first novel in the Echoland series of thrillers set in World War II and was first published in August 2013.
Echoland is set during the Emergency period in Dublin during World War II. An Irish lieutenant Paul Duggan, who is employed by the G2 Irish Military Intelligence Division, has to investigate a German spy who is writing and receiving cryptic letters to Copenhagen that involves the IRA in a possible German invasion.
He has also been asked by his uncle, a Fianna Fail politician, to find his cousin who has gone missing. The time is June 1940 and Ireland has decided to remain neutral in the war between Britain and Germany.
The Irish people stands divided in opinion, as supporting Germany could mean a united Ireland. It is a thriller about spies, politicians, conspiracies, the IRA, Germany, Britain, and an investigator.
“Dublin: One Book One Book 2017 will be the twelfth year of this annual programme. Echoland is set in the Dublin of 1940, expertly capturing the atmosphere of the city as its citizens cope with the challenges of the Emergency. It’s a brilliant opportunity for us to re-imagine our City as it was, while enjoying a thrilling read,” Dublin City Librarian, Margaret Hayes commented on the 2017 book choice.
