Three Famines

de Thomas Keneally

In a world of cyclical historic and modern famine, this account is a comparative story of three great famines. The first of these famines is An Gorta M r, the great hunger of Ireland, the famine that began in 1846 and whose end-date is a matter of debate amongst historians. In the Irish, Bengali and Ethopian famines, ideology, mindsets of governments, racial preconceptions and administrative incompetence were more lethal than the initiating blight, the loss of potatoes or rice or the grain named teff.