The subject of Maurice Leitch's three brooding and pessimistic novels is Northern Ireland. It is not the Northern Ireland of hunger strikes, political demonstrations, guerilla ambushes, and stone-throwing confrontations between Catholics and Protestants that one might expect. Although he does not entirely ignore secular violence, Leitch focuses instead on the spiritual toll the country's split personality has taken on its inhabitants. His Ulster is a place of little beauty, no nobility, no hope. His characters tend to be grotesques, too twisted and weakened to save even themselves. All want to leave, but few ever do.

Leitch was born to Protestant parents in Muckamore, County Antrim, and was educated at area schools and in Belfast. He taught in a primary school in the town of Antrim for six years and contributed free-lance articles and scripts to the local newspapers and BBC radio. In 1962 he began working full-time for the...