Summer, 1847. People are getting used to the corpses lying by the road and along the ditches. For John Mitchel - lawyer, journalist, activist, politician - the word 'famine' will forever conjure the hollowed faces of Ireland's dead, the liquid Irish of the past now mute on their tongues.

Propelled by disgust at the injustice, Mitchel will do all he can to fight for the destitute, the starved, the forgotten. His odyssey will take him all the way to America - that land of promise - but it will draw him into a terrible paradox. He is trying to save lives - in doing so, will he betray the very people he is trying to protect?In Fanatic Heart, Booker Prize winner Thomas Keneally takes on one of the most controversial figures of the fight for Irish independence to wrestle with the conflicts at the centre of a complicated legacy.