With this narrative sequence, first published in the mid-1980s, the Nobel laureate's verse shed the clotted and difficult tone of his early work in favour of lyricism and accessibility. The island of the title has been a site of pilgrimage for a thousand years, but the poet is journeying inwards, towards the creative source of his consciousness. Figures met along the way include Dante and Joyce, and ghosts closer to Heaney's life. Not since Yeats has an Irish poet occupied such a pivotal position in the life Ireland and the future direction of poetry. (Kirkus UK)