Limited first edition. 8vo. Pp. [ix], 56. Quarter-bound maroon cloth over fawn paper-boards, titled in gilt to spine on a black cloth strip; rust-orange endpapers. The limited edition, as issued, in matching maroon cloth and paper slipcase, and still in the publisher's sealed brown paper wrapping. 1/250 specially bound numbered copies signed by Heaney to the limitation page, out of a total edition of 260.
A verse translation of Sophocles' fifth century B.C. tragedy, Antigone, commissioned to mark the centenary of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin and where it premiered on March 31st, 2004. Partly inspired by Bush and Blair's 2003 war on Iraq – in particular the argument that you are either for state security or an advocate of terrorism – Heaney's version adroitly parries a Hegelian dialectic between the individual and the state, as language ceaselessly speaks truth to power. Awarded the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature.