Said the Dead
by Doireann Ni Ghriofa· 2026
In this mesmeric blend of female history and imagination, the author of A Ghost in the Throat leads readers on a haunting journey through a Victorian mental hospital in Cork, as an extraordinary chorus of voices from the past start speaking to the present-day visitor.
In the city of Cork, a derelict Victorian mental hospital is being converted into modern apartments. One passerby has always flinched as she passes the place. Had she lived in another time, she too might have found herself held within those walls.
Now, she notices a sign: FOR SALE.
It is the first of many signs. Guided by an irresistible impulse, she follows them. Soon, she is trespassing, stealing, absconding from the routine of mother, spouse, daughter, as she uncovers a chorus of startling voices: those of the women who knew the hospital best. They murmur from archives and old records. They haunt from stairwells and walls. In them—and in one figure in particular—she may find meaning and solace, righteous anger, salvation even. Or her final vanishing?
A work of sublime intensity and tenderness, Said the Dead breaks the boundaries between worlds—past and present, imagined and real, fact and fiction—to make something new and lasting: an experience full of danger, full of love and full of truth.
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In this mesmeric blend of female history and imagination, the author of A Ghost in the Throat leads readers on a haunting journey through a Victorian mental hospital in Cork, as an extraordinary chorus of voices from the past start speaking to the present-day visitor. In the city of Cork, a derelict Victorian mental hospital is being converted into modern apartments. One passerby has always flinched as she passes the place. Had she lived in another time, she too might have found herself held within those walls. Now, she notices a sign: FOR SALE. It is the first of many signs. Guided by an irresistible impulse, she follows them. Soon, she is trespassing, stealing, absconding from the routine of mother, spouse, daughter, as she uncovers a chorus of startling voices: those of the women who knew the hospital best. They murmur from archives and old records. They haunt from stairwells and walls. In them—and in one figure in particular—she may find meaning and solace, righteous anger, salvation even. Or her final vanishing? A work of sublime intensity and tenderness, Said the Dead breaks the boundaries between worlds—past and present, imagined and real, fact and fiction—to make something new and lasting: an experience full of danger, full of love and full of truth.