The Aran Islands

'Go to the Aran Islands. Live there as if you were one of the people themselves, express a life that has never found expression.' J.M. Synge did exactly as W.B. Yeats suggested and, revisiting these harsh yet beautiful specks of land off Ireland's west coast over a period of five years, created a literary masterpiece. The Aran Islands weaves their stories with Synge's own and the result, as Colm Tóibí­n has observed, is that 'Unlike most travel books of 100 years ago, it has not dated at all.'