A Migrant Heart is about departures and arrivals, uprooting and attachment, resettling and returning. Denis Sampson left Ireland as a student, leaving behind the farming countryside of his childhood, the city of Dublin where he was educated, and the history and culture of his native country. He arrived in the cosmopolitan city of Montreal and discovered he was not the only one in search of a new life; and then that search became his life. He also discovered many different ways to return to Ireland, until slowly, what was painfully forced apart was rejoined in a life lived in two places and cultures.

Denis Sampson is the author of Outstaring Nature’s Eye, The Fiction of John McGahern (Lilliput Press, 1993), Brian Moore: The Chameleon Novelist (Doubleday, 1998) and Young John McGahern: Becoming a Novelist (Oxford University Press, 2012). He lives in Montreal and Kilkenny. Website: denissampson.com.

Denis Sampson's profile page

That rarest of things these publishing days, an intellectual autobiography, A Migrant Heart walks the reader through a life equally of mind and place. Denis Sampson's journey, told with quiet grace, follows the road so many take to Canada — via the map of their own culture and upbringing. A gentle, thoughtful exploration of one Irishman's rambles. — Charles Foran