The water star - Philip Casey

'Set in a post-war London still recovering from the Blitz, the novel follows the overlapping lives of five characters who inhabit the ruins of North London . . . Casey escorts his reader through the labyrinths of his character's minds, unpicking the jumbled mosaic of mourning, desire and fear. The Water Star is a bitter-sweet testimony to the never-ending struggle between exile and assimilation' John Tague, Times Literary Supplement

'There is something at once tough and endearing in Casey's predominant concerns with making his creations seem like real people, with delineating intimate human relationships - with being, essentially, emotive and compassionate' John Kenny, Irish Times

'Casey is a poet and a playwright; he has a poet's delicate ear and a playwright's eye for direction . . . The Water Star is a graceful, gentle novel that does not shy from the truth. It is a metaphor of lives rebuilt from rubble - whether the detritus of the past or the structures shattered by the Blitz' Erica Wagner, The Times

Philip Casey was born to Irish parents in London in 1950 and grew up in Co Wexford. A poet and novelist, he lives in Dublin.