At the funeral, several priests remarked how appropriate it was that Father Conroy should have returned on his last day to Rosnagree, the parish in which he was born.

Father Tom Conroy - a spiky, difficult man - dies at a reunion of his seminary colleagues. As this masterly novel unfolds, we are taken through the years that formed this troublesome priest, who knew his life had been a failure. The Hungry Grass is a sharply witty and moving novel of a world on the cusp of change.

Richard Power was born in Waterford, south Ireland. He became a civil servant in Dublin, but at weekends and in the evenings wrote. He published his masterpiece, The Hungry Grass, in 1969. A year later he died suddenly at the age of 41.