About The Book
How We Mortals
BLAME THE GODS
It is June 16th, 2004, Dublin, Ireland. Centenary celebrations for James Joyce’s Ulysses are in full flow.
A troubled boy is about to walk into the Bloomsday Centenary Concert, which is packed full of dignitaries, and commit a violent act.
Inside the concert hall, the lives of four unsuspecting people spin towards each other: Omar Wilde, a half-Egyptian/half-Irish journalist struggling with an ailing marriage; Flora Wilde, his headstrong Polish wife, haunted by the loss of their stillborn child; Kieran Lynch, a young actor playing the character of Stephen Dedalus on the streets of Dublin that day; and Bláithín O’Leary, an emotionally fragile young actress and drug addict who is dragged into a political scandal involving a cabinet minister who happens to be her father.
Four very different people,
one potentially awful event, and
the dark secrets that bind them together.

Map

Soundtrack
How We Mortals BLAME THE GODS
DUBLIN IS A CITY OF MUSIC, and just like Joyce, I felt it could only come properly alive by framing the story in the sounds of the city. I myself cannot imagine life without a permanent soundtrack. Music is everywhere in the streets, cafés, pubs, homes, ears and imaginations of Irish people. Therefore, I decided to embed a soundtrack into my novel. I have tried both to reflect the music I was hearing all over Dublin at that time, as well as music I consider appropriate to the theme. I hope more than anything that some of these works will be a reflection of the incredible wealth of musical talent that our poetic island has to offer. The non-Irish pieces are personal favourites and appropriate to the scene at hand. I invite anyone who wants the full experience to download the tracks on their music providers and play them while reading the appropriate scene. If you have Spotify, the songlist has already been put together for you and is at this location online.
