How do you rebuild a world that seems to be falling apart?

Nealon returns to his family home in Ireland after a long time away, only to be greeted by a completely empty house. No heat or light, no sign of his wife or child anywhere. It seems the world has forgotten that he even existed.

The one exception is a persistent caller on the telephone, someone who seems to know everything about Nealon's life, his recent bother with the law and, more importantly, what has happened to his family. All Nealon needs to do is talk with him. But the more he talks the closer Nealon gets to the same trouble he was in years ago, tangled in the very crimes of which he claims to be innocent.

Part roman noir, part metaphysical thriller, This Plague of Souls is a story for these fractured times, dealing with how we might mend the world, and the story of a man who would let the world go to hell if he could keep his family together.

Praise for This Plague Of Souls

"The most involving new novel I read this year was This Plague of Souls . . . [McCormack] has an uncanny gift for presenting a vivid realist depiction of the contemporary west of Ireland but layering it through with unexpected genre notes- there are elements of noir, dystopia, existential mystery. Built on lines of perfectly cadenced dialogue, the book is easily on apar with its feted predecessor, Solar Bones"

Kevin Barry, New Statesman, Books of the Year

"McCormack's prose is quite simply the best around, his sentences a joy, clear and precise . . . a finely wrought narrative"

Irish Examiner

"The Irish master of tension returns . . . This Plague of Souls, a late entry for the most interesting novel of the year, is more straightforwardly expressed, but remains a fully fledged tale of the unexpected"

John Self, The Times

"McCormack's language is evocative, perfectly suited to the noirish atmosphere he builds throughout the book . . . McCormack displays his gift for describing landscapes and situations that might seem unlovely, but for the fact that they are loved by the author's observing eye"

The Guardian

"Terror, crime and sinister phone-calls - a magnificent Irish novel. For the most part, it reads like a thriller, shot through with a pervading atmosphere of precarity and uncertainty . . . a beautifully written collision of mystery and metaphysics"

The Telegraph

"Drawing these threads of heartbreak, surreal menace and the possible imminent collapse of the world together, McCormack weaves a web that holds the reader in suspense to the end - and beyond"

The Spectator

“Operating in a minor key, nudging us coyly towards an eerily personal apocalypse, the new book creates an utterly distinctive, utterly contemporary mood”

Kevin Power, The Irish Times

“Ultimately, this is a mood piece with a creeping, mesmeric tone of its own..seek out this unique proposition by this inimitable writer”

The Irish Independent

“Tightly structured, with elements of noir.”
The Los Angeles Times

“A suspenseful and beautiful work by a writer who hates where he believes the world is headed and is attuned to the simple joys we are in danger of losing.”
The Minneapolis Star-Tribune

“McCormack is a singular talent, lucid sentences locking into an eerie and unforgettable edifice. It has brutal physicality and arch metaphysics.”
The Scotsman

“Suffused in a sense of indeterminate dread, yet richly committed to the tangible realities of its setting . . . [This Plague of Souls] is an enigmatic, unsettling, Pinteresque masterpiece of withheld information.”
Nat Segnit, The Times Literary Supplement

“A world of chaos and instability, with a troubled multi-dimensional character at its centre and an exquisitely rendered rural Ireland of beauty and darkness as the backdrop. McCormack is a cryptic, elliptical writer, forensic in his plotting and canny at teasing his readers.”
Financial Times

“McCormack's previous novel, Solar Bones, was robbed when it only made the longlist for the Booker Prize in 2017. Centred on the everyman psyche of an Irish engineer, it had a poignant twist I'm not about to spoil here - but if you've read it, let me say now that the trick he pulled in that book has nothing on the high-jinks afoot here . . . It's all very slippery and endlessly suggestive, as the circular wandering gives way to dystopian horror and a parable of complicity and guilt on an interconnected planet.”
Daily Mail

“In a further step to cement his place at the top table of contemporary Irish novelists, McCormack has crafted another perfectly plotted opus . . . Perfect reading for cold autumn nights.”
Buzz Magazine (UK)

“In This Plague of Souls, a whip-tight narrative often spills into poetry without ever losing its emotional heft . . . There are echoes of Seamus Heaney in McCormack’s pinpoint depictions of rural life.”
Business Post

“Evocative prose conjures vivid images of the brooding Irish countryside and Nealon’s bleak existence.”
Publishers Weekly

“This Plague of Souls is written in perfectly-pitched cadences. It captures with exquisite care a man ambushed by loss and fear, by hovering forces that are mysterious and otherworldly and beyond his control. It further establishes Mike McCormack as one of the best novelists writing now”

Colm Toibin

“This is the reason Mike McCormack is one of Ireland’s best-loved novelists; he is the most modestly brilliant writer we have. His delicate abstractions are woven from the ordinary and domestic - both metaphysical and moving, McCormack’s work asks the big questions about our small lives’

Anne Enright

"Stark, intense, fiercely controlled . . . Mike McCormack at his best"

Pat McCabe

"A sombre tale shot through with glints of dark humour, in which the sins of the past at once haunt and illuminate the present. A compelling read"

John Banville

“In This Plague of Souls, recently-released jailbird Nealon is confronted by a stranger who offers a fresh take on global possibilities, while the country is in absolute lockdown for unspecified reasons. The atmosphere drips with menace as Nealon has to drive through the night to meet this unknowable man. Is he his nemesis or his conscience?Enigmatic from start to finish, Mike McCormack is unafraid to challenge his readers with the big questions most of us desperately try to avoid. Skilfully told and superbly written, this is the story of the human condition in all of its strength and vulnerability.  A beautifully profound book”

Liz Nugent

"This is a darkly marvellous novel: at once intimate, domestic and poignant, then speculative, hard-boiled and wild. That McCormack can be so convincing, so skilled in both registers is remarkable. That he can do it concurrently is genius"

Lisa Mcinerney

"It was deliciously sinister and reminded me that nobody captures the cold beauty and cruelty of the world like Mike; I just know I'm going to be chewing it over in my mind for weeks"

Sara Baume

''This Plague Of Souls is a mesmerisingly spare, eerily beautiful novel from a singular writer. A book that feels like wandering through the beautfully rendered yet hauntingly empty levels of some strange, utterly compelling video game.''

Colin Barrett

“Mike McCormack’s fiction has always had a philosophical bent, and none more so than in This Plague of Souls. In Nealon, we’re given access to the mind of a man minutely attuned to every movement and vibration of his own consciousness, a man who is psychologically astute but receptive, too, to the hidden rhythms and frequencies of reality. There is a beautiful surreal feel to this novel, with its limbo landscape and night-time drives, but it is Nealon’s meditation on family and fatherhood – and what the loss of those might mean – that will linger long in the reader afterwards”

Mary Costello

“A small novel crammed with big ideas, This Plague of Souls is at once though-provoking and deeply satisfying.”
Mick Herron, author of Slow Horses