The Booker is an annual literary award presented to the novel judged to be the most outstanding published in Great Britain and Ireland. Continue reading
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Re-reading At Swim-Two-Birds.
The longer the book went on, the more convinced I was that I had not read it before, but then I found on the bottom of page 189 a note in my pencilled handwriting. Continue reading
Two Books to Make us Think
What it really meant to be poor and how to survive it. And a book about a priest who fathered a child with nun. Continue reading
The Lundy Principle in Northern Ireland
Are the DUP ever going to change? Continue reading
Four new Irish novels
John Boyne returns to his earlier Striped Pyjamas book and we meet Shane McGowan’s young sister. Continue reading
Should We Forget and Vote for Them?
Two new books about the IRA bombing campaigns of the 70s and 80s. Continue reading
This Happened in Ireland. Read and Weep
The Magdalen Laundries from someone who was in one from the age of 11. Continue reading
Dublin, Offaly, Belfast: three new Irish novels
Book reviews by Frank O’Shea OLD GOD’S TIME. By Sebastian Barry. Faber 2023. 261 pp Sebastian Barry’s latest novel is different. Very different. It is almost like an extended meditation on life and the different things that people put up with in an ordinary life. ‘Things happened to people, and some people were required to … Continue reading
The Irishman who Shot the Duke of Edinburgh
The author, Simon Smith, is a filmmaker who has recorded stories from around the world, and that background is seen in the writing as he fills in little details and concentrates on the lives, likes and troubles of the main characters. Continue reading
Remembering Hugh O’Flaherty
With honours from the US, Britain and Israel, he is almost forgotten in Ireland, sixty years after he died. Continue reading
Tinteán 