Someone knows about Julia Glynn's affair. She and husband Michael are the envy of their neighbours: prosperous, devout, the model couple. Then one day, an anonymous letter arrives with the morning papers, describing Julia's trysts with Michael's nephew in obscene detail.Frantic with suspicion and frustrated desire, Julia imagines catastrophe in their small, curtain-twitching town. As the letters keep arriving, she struggles to retain composure and proceed with plans for a family pilgrimage to Lourdes - only for other buried scandals to come knocking at the door of their pristine home. Frank in its depiction of sexuality and queerness in 1950s Ireland, The Pilgrimage was immediately banned on original publication. Outrageous and bleakly funny, it is a powerful evocation of the corrosive effects of repression.



John Broderick (1924-1989) was born in Athlone, County Westmeath, Ireland and died in Bath, England.He began his writing career as a journalist, becoming known as a scrupulous and often controversial literary critic. He authored twelve novels, including An Apology for Roses (1973), The Pride of Summer (1976), London Irish (1979) and The Trial of Father Dillingham (1982). Although The Pilgrimage (1961), his first novel, was immediately banned by the Irish Censorship Board, Broderick went on to be elected to membership of the Irish Academy of Letters in 1968, and in 1975 received the Academy's Annual Award for Literature.



A brooding and beautifully observed short novel, an absolute masterclass in character study which I read with a mixture of awe and jealousy. Broderick's writing is fearless, unfussy and utterly ahead of the times. I wish I could write with this degree of intensity and calculated remove



Pulsating with passion, parochialism, guilt and greed, this exposé of scandal and secrets is shocking and witty



A bleakly comic and often cruel evocation of a repressive Ireland



I absolutely loved The Pilgrimage... Brilliant... A book about what it feels like to live with doubt and still keep going



A sour and lasting portrait of what boils beneath kept-up appearances



A taut stylish book that surely read like an incendiary device at the time... Broderick's tightly controlled style is awash with the sharp humour of recognition



Fearless and frank and sometimes comic... Had The Pilgrimage been freely available in 1961... [it] would have filled a silence about homosexuality that was almost total



At its best, the novel's simmering moods and atmosphere of squandered potential and sexual deception recall Tennessee Williams



Masterly... Ironic, sarcastic like Swift and Shaw, sentimental like The Playboy of the Western World