Hugh Brody is a writer, anthropologist and film-maker. After publishing Inishkillane, his classic study of the west of Ireland, he spent many years immersed in communities of indigenous peoples of Arctic and sub-Arctic Canada. Hugh Brody’s prolific output includes work on fourteen films, including Treaty 8 Country (1981), People of the Islands (1982), On Indian Land (1986), Time Immemorial (1991), Inside Australia (2004) and The Meaning of Life (2008). Over a career spanning half a century, Brody has written nine books, including Inishkillane (1973), The People’s Land (1975), Maps and Dreams (1981), The Other Side of Eden (2002). His latest book is a memoir, Landscapes of Silence: from Childhood to the Arctic, published by Faber & Faber in 2022.

His first work of fiction, Nineteen Nineteen, co-authored with Michael Ignatieff, was published in 1985 by Faber & Faber and later made into a film. In 1991, he published Means of Escape, a collection of short stories. As well as writing and making films, Hugh Brody has worked as a researcher, adviser and co-ordinator on public processes.

For many years, he has been working with the Khomani Bushman and South African San institute on land claims, oral history and community video projects on the southern Kalahari.

Books in order of publication

Gola: Life and Last Days of an Island Community (1969) (with F. H. A. Aalen)

Indians on Skid Row (1971)

Inishkillane: Change and Decline in the West of Ireland (1973)

The People’s Land (1975)

Nineteen Nineteen (1985)

Maps and Dreams (1991)

The Other Side of Eden: Hunters, Farmers and the Shaping of the World (2000)

Landscapes of Silence: From Childhood to the Arctic (2022)