A Harrowing Reckoning With Ireland's Magdalene Laundry Shame
Louise Brangan's history gives voice to the women erased inside Ireland's Magdalene Laundries. It is a necessary, harrowing work of social history for readers seeking testimony, accountability and a clearer understanding of institutional cruelty, survival and lives hidden behind closed doors.
Online Price
The Fallen
Collect 56 Reward Points
- Expected back in stock
- Free Delivery On This Item
- Dispatched When Stock Arrives
A Harrowing Reckoning With Ireland's Magdalene Laundry Shame
Louise Brangan's history gives voice to the women erased inside Ireland's Magdalene Laundries. It is a necessary, harrowing work of social history for readers seeking testimony, accountability and a clearer understanding of institutional cruelty, survival and lives hidden behind closed doors.
- Book Synopsis
-
When the gates of the last Magdalene Laundry closed in 1996, Ireland moved on. Or so it seemed. 'Compelling, measured and deeply felt' ANNE ENRIGHT 'A terrific yet harrowing unearthing of Ireland's shadowland. A landmark book' RORY CARROLL Following independence in 1922, Ireland began to chase a dream: to become the perfect Catholic nation. But purity had a price. Throughout the twentieth century, thousands of women and girls who did not conform - the wayward, the poor, the disabled, the abused - were sent to the Magdalene Laundries. Each was perceived to have fallen in some way. Once locked inside, their hair was shorn off, their names were erased - and then they were put to work. They washed, they scrubbed and they prayed, labouring in an attempt to salvage their souls. This remains one of the darkest and most misunderstood periods of recent history. Published to coincide with the thirtieth anniversary of the last Laundry's closure, The Fallen is the forgotten story of the Magdalene Laundries, told through the voices of the women who endured them, the nuns who presided over them and the communities that lived alongside them. Unflinching and compassionate, Louise Brangan draws on archives and survivors' testimonies to dismantle long-held myths about what the Laundries were, who was sent to these places of violence and secrecy, and why. As we move from the past into the present, Brangan compels us not only to confront this shameful history, but to ask a deeper question: what do we choose to remember? 'Critical, informed and beautifully written' MÁIRÉAD ENRIGHT 'Breaking silence is a catalyst for change' CAELAINN HOGAN Winner of the 2024 Royal Society of Literature Giles St Aubyn Award
Ideal for readers who:
- Feel ready for Magdalene Laundry history told through testimony, archives and care.
- Come for myths and silences challenged without reducing survivors to symbols.
- Seek Irish institutional history that keeps lived experience at the centre.
- Can sit with a difficult account of shame, memory and accountability.
- About The Author
- Dr Louise Brangan is an Irish academic who researches injustice and punishment. She is a 2023 BBC and AHRC New Generation Thinker and winner of the 2024 Royal Society of Literature Giles St Aubyn Award. She lives and works in Scotland.
- Product Details
-
- ISBN
- 9781847928474
- Format
- Paperback
- Publisher
- The Bodley Head, (30 April 2026)
- Number of Pages
- 368
- Weight
- 440 grams
- Language
- English
- Dimensions
- 233 x 154 x 30 mm
- Categories: