'Go to the Aran Islands. Live there as if you were one of the people themselves, express a life that has never found expression.' J.M. Synge did exactly as W.B. Yeats suggested and, revisiting these harsh yet beautiful specks of land off Ireland's west coast over a period of five years, created a literary masterpiece. Synge immersed himself in the islanders' lives as they steered their curaghs through Atlantic waves, mourned ...
