The Dirty Dust: Cré Na Cille

"Chances are, unless you’ve been brushing up on your modern Irish, you haven’t read Máirtín Ó Cadhain or this 1949 novel. But don’t sweat it: Very few in the English-speaking world had, either, until it finally got an English translation this year. The book, a foul-mouthed gabfest between corpses in a small-town graveyard, can be a tough one to pin down. It’s at once simple in premise and complex in execution; and while not much of note actually happens, its playful turns of phrase — and remarkably inventive profanity — give a lot of bawdy life to this challenging dialogue of the dead."