How Many Miles to Babylon?

Set against the backdrop of pre-independence Ireland and at the dawn of World War One, Jennifer Johnston's 1974 novellaA long short story or short novel. How Many Miles to Babylon? centres on the unlikely friendship between Alec, an Anglo-Irish aristocrat, and Jerry, the lower-class son of a labourer on his lands. In some ways, they are opposites: Alec is the privileged but friendless child of cold parents, while Jerry is wild and impoverished but deeply loyal to his parents. Yet they bond over their passion for horses and quickly become intimately close, before their friendship is outlawed by Alec's mother. Their forbidden childhood bond continues to be strained by rigid social divisions and later, as the narrative moves to the chaos of the Western Front, military hierarchies too. Part coming-of-age story and part anti-war elegy, Johnston's novella examines how individuals and relationships are shaped by systems they cannot control.