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Few and Far Between by Jan Carson

Episode 5

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The stunning new novel from the winner of the EU Prize for Literature, a magically surreal story about history, identity and redemption. Read by Tara Lynne O’Neill (‘Derry Girls.’) It’s summer 2017 and the last few residents of the Lough Neagh Archipelago, nicknamed the Ark, are facing imminent eviction. The flood planned to combat a devastating algae outbreak will submerge their homes, forcing them back to the Mainland for the first time in fifty years. Rosemary, Robert-John and Marion Connolly came to the islands as children in the 1970s following their mercurial father RJ; an anthropologist studying the unique society that had developed there. For many, the Neagh Archipelago represented a utopia, a chance to be free of the prejudices and history of Troubles era Northern Ireland. But perhaps this utopia wasn’t all that it seemed. The four main islands on the Far Side of the Ark are: Tom’s Hard, a ‘popular’ suicide spot; Middle Flat, where the centre for traumatized comatose individuals – commonly known as Sleepers – is based; Church Flat, a kind of limbo populated by the mute ghostly presence of locals hovering between life and death; and Eglish Flat, an illegal dumping ground which appears to consume whatever is deposited there. Marion and Robert-John have grown accustomed to their haunted existence on the Ark as caretakers of the mysterious islands. How will they cope with a new life on the Mainland? Is it possible to leave the past behind? And will the Ark ever let them go... Author Jan Carson is a writer based in Belfast. She has published three novels, three short story collections and two micro-fiction collections. Her novel ‘The Fire Starters’ won the EU Prize for Literature for Ireland 2019 and her subsequent novel ‘The Raptures’ was shortlisted for the An Post Irish Novel of the Year and Kerry Group Novel of the Year in 2022. She is the Seamus Heaney Centre Fellow at Queen’s University Belfast 2025 and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Reader: Tara Lynne O’Neill Writer: Jan Carson Abridger: Katrin Williams Producer: Michael Shannon A BBC Audio Northern Ireland Production for BBC Radio 4.