HUMAN CHAIN

First edition, first printing. Original burgundy cloth with gilt titles to the spine, in the Pentagram designed dustwrapper. A fine copy, the binding square and firm, the contents clean and fresh throughout. In the dustwrapper, fine except for the merest fading to the spine. Not price-clipped (£12.99 to the front flap). A nice copy.

Heaney's twelfth and final collection. "[A] book of shades and memories, of things whispered, of journeys into the underworld, of elegies and translations, of echoes and silences. Heaney allows th[e] struggle between the lacrimae rerum and the consolations of poetry to have a force which is satisfying because its result is so tentative and uncertain. Memory here can be filled with tones of regret and even undertones of anguish, but it also can appear with a sense of hard-won wonder. [H]is best single volume for many years." (Colm Tóibín, The Guardian, 21 August 2010).