What is "the irish famine"

n. a famine in Ireland resulting from a potato blight; between 1846 and 1851 a million people starved to death and 1.6 million emigrated (most to America) [syn: the Great Hunger, the Great Starvation, the Great Calamity]

The Irish Famine is a book written by Diarmaid Ferriter and Colm Tóibín. The book is in two volumes, the first of which was written and originally published by Tóibín in 1999. The second volume, written by Ferriter, is entitled The Capricious Growth of a Single Root and was added in 2001.