Written when he lived in South Africa, it is a roman à clef about his time in Dublin immediately after World War II.

The novel paints an unflattering picture of lower middle-class life in Ireland's capital city in the mid-1940s.

Cleeve wrote The Far Hills following his failure to find a publisher for his previous novel on the subject of ancient Crete.

Into their lives comes Brendan Courtney O’Brien, scion of a wealthy Irish family, who has fallen in love with the eldest of the McDonald children, Erika.

Through Brendan's eyes we meet a succession of apparently aimless losers who hang around the decrepit hair-dressing salon which is the McDonald's only source of income.

In a bid to escape the grinding poverty in which they languish, the young couple join a travelling circus.

Jimmy has decided to stay in Ireland and, as the ship sails out into Dublin Bay, he watches from the pier before turning to find his own destiny somewhere in "the far hills".

Jimmy McDonald: Erika's delinquent younger brother who, even more than his sister, wants to escape the relentless misery of their lives.

Such a mixed-race relationship was in breach of South Africa's Apartheid laws, under which the author was living when he wrote the novel.