Imagining the Others
An accessible crime thriller it may be, but John Banville’s most celebrated novel also marks out his singular intellectual ambition, an ambition that in the early 1970s Seamus Deane recognised as distinguishing him from all other young Irish writers.
Rebroadcast Voices
A new collection of translations from Derek Mahon defends the notion of a republic of letters, where writers do not write in the isolation of their own language but in a conversation that goes beyond temporal and geographical borders, as well as beyond cultural differences.
Kin and Kingship
A Middle Irish saga, second only in reputation to the Tain, has been republished in a new scholarly edition whose introduction brings out the work’s narrative artistry and coherence.
The Old Boot Resouled
The Innti generation of Irish-language writers recast poetry for a new generation of urban dwellers and imbued it with the revolutionary and liberating sentiments of the time.
No Pact With Progress
In 1974 the Limerick poet Michael Hartnett announced from the stage of a Dublin theatre that he would no longer write in English, a decision which, he informed the audience, gave him somewhere to stand.
Evil Literature
A new survey deals with literature and sexuality in Ireland from Joyce to McGahern, taking in the background of shrill clerical warnings of moral dangers and occasions of sin and a more humane and well-intentioned, if much mocked, strain of advice to the young and inexperienced.
The Writing Cure
Ross Skelton’s memoir of his Antrim childhood and his unhappy relationship with his father casts light on some of the hidden complexities of Ulster society in the middle of the last century and is likely to prove a work of lasting value.
The Empathy Man
Finishing a novel for Colum McCann feels like finishing a PhD. He upends the traditional maxim to “write what you know” in favour of writing “what you want to know”.
A Millionaire of Words
Joyce’s funny, moving and infuriating masterpiece should send us, not into the cold and sterile embrace of the examination room, but out again into the warm and throbbing world.
Trompe l’Oeil
All is very far from what it seems in a literary mystery novel by poet Ciaran Carson set in Belfast and Paris.