Articles
Essays, reviews, and commentary on literature, history, politics, and ideas.
Voices from the Chorus
Given the historical amnesia that prevails, Katrina Goldstone’s account of the activity of Irish left-wing writers in the Thirties is something of a revelation.
The Europeans
Eurosceptics have been predicting the collapse of the EU for twenty years now, sure that the citizens would realise it was all an impossible dream
Webs and Networks
In popular imagination, the Arts and Crafts movement is indelibly linked to well-known figures like William Morris, John Ruskin and Edward Burne-Jones.
No Myth No Nation
A state will be at a loss if it doesn’t know where it came from.
The Sly Masquerade
For quality of output, for growth and longevity, for the honesty and intensity of his narrative voices and for the relentless quest for forms that would make sense of his and his country’s experience,
Shit Buzz in Belgrade
Kevin Power’s new novel is both riotous rant and thoughtful coming-of-age tale. The punchy lyricism enables sympathy as well as laughter
Her True Face
Sylvia Plath presented an image to the world – brilliant student, stellar emerging poet and active, outdoor girl – while within she was deeply troubled and prone to the swings of a disabling depression. A sparkling new biography does full…
The Devil’s Disciple
As a person, Patricia Highsmith was simply vile: mean, cruel and hard.
Midwinter
In her second collection, Leeanne Quinn gives voice and presence to the Russian poets Anna Akhmatova, Marina Tsvetaeva and Osip Mandelstam. Like Tsvetaeva and Akhmatova, Quinn has experienced grief and loss; like them, she has an attraction for cemeteries.
The Autonomy of the Past
Each past era, Maria Stepanova reminds us, has its own particular dust that settles in every corner. Those who conflate past with present or appropriate the memories of the dead for their own benefit move us further from the plains…
Eyes Wide Open
Many great novels, from ‘Lolita’ to ‘The Kindly Ones’, force our recognition through horror and disturbing conceptions of beauty we might seek to deny, but the proper defence of having written such works, the refutation of shallow moralistic attacks on…
Writing as a Weapon
In his posthumously published final collection, ‘Shadow of the Owl’, Matthew Sweeney employs the weapon of writing to cope with terminal illness. The book marks the moving and triumphant culmination of Sweeney’s unique brand of ‘imagistic narrative’ poetry.