Pilgrimage

John Broderick (1924–1989) was a novelist, critic and patron of the arts, celebrated for his unsparing portraits of Irish provincial life. The only child of a bakery family, he lived for periods in Paris, forming friendships with writers such as Julien Green, Gore Vidal and Truman Capote. His debut novel The Pilgrimage (1961) was banned in Ireland but appeared in the U.S. as The Chameleons, establishing his reputation. A pioneering writer of queer Irish lives, Broderick was contributor to The Irish Times, and was elected to the Irish Academy of Letters in 1968. He died in Bath in 1989, bequething his estate to support the arts of his home town of Athlone.

“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. He exposes Catholicism but has no need to mock it. People go through empty rituals of observance and lead utterly secular and selfish lives, but it doesn’t mean God isn’t watching. With The Pilgrimage, Athlone found its Balzac . . . a man unafraid to confront taboos at a time when others felt it wiser to keep their heads down.”