The Dream of the Celt

This is the story of a man of legend: the Irish diplomat Roger Casement. Celebrated as a humanitarian hero and knighted by the British Empire, he was one of the first Europeans to expose the barbaric horrors of colonialism. His harrowing investigations into the atrocities committed in the Belgian Congo and the Peruvian Amazon shocked the world and revealed the brutal reality of the rubber trade. But the things he witnessed on his journeys would change him forever, setting him on a devastating new path that would turn him against the very empire he served.

What leads a man feted as a hero to be imprisoned and tried as a traitor by his own government? From the jungles of Africa and South America to the fraught politics of Irish independence, this novel reconstructs the life of a complex and controversial figure. It delves into the story of a man who was both moral and immoral, a libertarian and a conspirator, whose secret life threatened to overshadow his public legacy. This is an exploration of the shadows of the human soul, the brutalities of power, and the story of how one man's fight for the oppressed became a fight for his own homeland.