Description

Colum McCann’s Transatlantic tells three linked stories. Women’s lives tie them to key events in history. Lily Duggan works as a housemaid and comes from Ireland. She meets Frederick Douglass. The tale then follows her daughter, Emily. It also follows her granddaughter, Lottie. Hannah Carson brings the story to the present. She carries the hopes and losses of those before her.

The novel spans the lives of several generations. It moves between Ireland, Missouri and the windblown coast of Newfoundland. It shows how private lives link to wider events. Memory binds these women across time and space. Gabriela Tanase translated this edition. She worked from English into Romanian.

McCann was born in Dublin in 1965. He first worked as a journalist in Ireland. In the early 1980s, he rode a bike across North America. He later worked with young offenders in Texas. He spent eighteen months in Japan, then moved to New York. He and his wife Allison have three children. Their names are Isabella, John Michael and Christian. He belongs to Aosdana, the Irish academy of artists. France named him a Chevalier des Arts et Lettres in 2009.