ISDAL: a Guardian and Irish Times Book of the Year 2023 (Paperback) - Susannah Dickey

The much-anticipated debut poetry collection from acclaimed novelist Susannah Dickey, on the subject of our cultural obsession with true crime.

A Guardian and Irish Times Book of 2023

The much-anticipated debut poetry collection from acclaimed novelist Susannah Dickey, on the subject of our cultural obsession with true crime.

ISDAL is a timely interrogation of the true crime genre. In the first of its three parts, we follow the flirty co-presenters of a podcast about the mystery of 'Isdal Woman', whose burnt remains were discovered in Norway in 1970 and who has never been identified.

At the centre of the book is an inquiry into our perennial obsession with female victims, sexiness, and death: 'The death in question has already occurred', the poet observes, 'has occurred to someone sufficiently abstract as to allow us to romp gainfully, guilelessly, guiltlessly through a simulacrum of death's corridors'.

The free verse poems in the final section both explore and - perhaps inevitably - enact the ethical ambiguities of the genre. Witty, excoriating, formally ingenious, ISDAL marks the arrival of a thrilling talent in contemporary poetry.

About the Author

Susannah Dickey is a poet and novelist from Derry and the author of four pamphlets, I had some very slight concerns (2017), genuine human values (2018), bloodthirsty for marriage (2020) and Oh! (2022). Her poems have been published in The Poetry Review, The TLS, Poetry London, and Poetry Ireland Review, amongst others. She is an Eric Gregory Award winner, a prize granted for a collection by poets under the age of thirty. Susannah is the author of two novels, Tennis Lessons (2020), and Common Decency (2022), both published by Doubleday UK and Penguin Ireland.