A magisterial account of one of the worst disasters to strike humankind—the Great Irish Potato Famine—conveyed as lyrical narrative history from the acclaimed author of The Great Mortality

In this comprehensive account of the Irish Potato Famine, delivered with novelistic flair, John Kelly gives us not only the startling facts of this disaster—one of the worst to strike humankind, killing twice as many lives as the American Civil War—but examines the intersection of political greed, bacterial infection, religious intolerance, and racism that made it possible. Kelly brings new material to his analysis of relevant political factors during the years leading up to the famine, and the extent to which Britain's nation-building policies exacerbated the mounting crisis. Despite the shocking, infuriating implications of his findings, The Graves Are Walking is ultimately a story of triumph—of one people's ability to remake themselves in a new land in the face of the unthinkable.