10/06/2026
Eoghan Béal - illustrated by
For the past months, Darach Ó Scolaí and Alé Mercado have been working on Eoghan Béal, a new illustrated book for readers drawn to the darker edges of Irish medieval storytelling.
Darach has taken a brief and unsettling fragment from the Irish annals and transformed it into something strange, vivid, and deeply rooted in oral tradition.
Readers of his work will know the depth he brings to these worlds; his recent novel Bódléar received the Oireachtas Prize for Literary Fiction and multiple Irish-language Book of the Year awards. The scale and complexity of Eoghan Béal demanded a different approach to the artwork as well, pursued at times as if under possession by some old demon of vengeance, to follow the narrative of the book. The result is a book wholly satisfying in its final form. Alé reckons possession may yet become a useful part of the working process.
