The Sway of Winter tells the story of Birgit, a young Scandinavian woman who has moved to the island of Inis Breac to paint, and to recover from a suffocating relationship. Geoff, an English widower, shattered by years of hard drinking after his wife’s drowning, runs the local bookshop. Birgit visits Africa in a quest to decide her future in working among the deprived, but finds there only a mirror of an inner poverty. This finely wrought debut novel is a potent revelation of how lives converge in the passage between trauma and resolution, leading to emotional renewal. With a fresh and unusual voice new to Irish fiction, Orla Murphy captivates the reader with her passionate and nuanced narrative.