This book provides a political and geographical history of how boglands (or peat 'bogs') are represented in modern and contemporary Irish literature and culture from the 1880s to the present.

This book provides a political and geographical history of how boglands (or bogs) are represented in modern and contemporary Irish literature and culture (1880s-present). Drawing on a range of Irish writers, including Bram Stoker, Frank O'Connor, Sean O'Faolain, Daniel Corkery, Seamus Heaney, Marina Carr, Deirdre Kinahan, Erin Hart, and Tim Robinson, Contentious Terrains argues that the destabilizing capacities of the bog provide a space to explore historically fraught colonial tensions and social struggles through the postcolonial Gothic form.