A fictional imagining of the gentle but troubled zealot William Cowper--best known as a precursor to Romantics such as Wordsworth and Burns--Brian Lynch"s The Winner of Sorrow brings to life the mind and times of an eighteenth-century poet. Intense and exhilarating, this is literary fiction at its finest--the reader will be hard-pressed not to rush ahead to see what happens next. Yet you"ll want to savor every word as Lynch traces Cowper"s tragic descent into madness, which is presented matter-of-factly so that the novel is not sentimental but austere, not precious but serious, and yet, remarkably, lively, sensuous, and blackly comic. "A wonderful book." -The Sunday Tribune "At once moving, instructive and slyly funny, that rare thing, a recuperation of a poet by a poet." -John Banville "A brilliant re-imagining of the troubled life of William Cowper." -Dermot Bloger "An exceptional Irish writer." -Thomas Kilroy, Irish Independent "If you want the low-down and high-down on the delicate, brutal reality of a poet"s life, you must read The Winner of Sorrow." -Paul Durcan "Beautifully written, poignant, witty and profound." -Clare Boylav