Hailed as "the best comic fantasy since "Tristram Shandy"" upon its publication in 1964, "The Dalkey Archive" is Flann O'Brien's fifth and final novel; or rather (as O'Brien wrote to his editor), "The book is not meant to be a novel or anything of the kind but a study in derision, various writers with their styles, and sundry modes, attitudes and cults being the rats in the cage."
Among the targets of O'Brien's derision are religiosity, intellectual abstractions, J. W. Dunne's and Albert Einstein's views on time and relativity, and the lives and works of Saint Augustine and James Joyce,...
Hailed as "the best comic fantasy since "Tristram Shandy"" upon its publication in 1964, "The Dalkey Archive" is Flann O'Brien's fifth and final no...
A wildly comic send-up of Irish literature and culture, "At Swim-Two-Birds" is the story of a young, lazy, and frequently drunk Irish college student who lives with his curmudgeonly uncle in Dublin. When not in bed (where he seems to spend most of his time) or reading he is composing a mischief-filled novel about Dermot Trellis, a second-rate author whose characters ultimately rebel against him and seek vengeance. From drugging him as he sleeps to dropping the ceiling on his head, these figures of Irish myth make Trellis pay dearly for his bad writing. Hilariously funny and inventive, "At...
A wildly comic send-up of Irish literature and culture, "At Swim-Two-Birds" is the story of a young, lazy, and frequently drunk Irish college stude...
Originally published as three separate volumes--"Donkey's Years," " Dog Days," and "The Whole Hog"--"A Bestiary" relates the life and times of one of Ireland's greatest contemporary writers. As in his fiction, Higgins's writing exquisitely captures sights, smells, and emotions, detailing his life from childhood in County Kildare before his family's economic decline, to his mother's slow, agonizing death; from his travels in England and South Africa, to his two years spent living with a schoolmistress after the end of his first marriage.
In writing his memoirs Higgins exposes the sources...
Originally published as three separate volumes--"Donkey's Years," " Dog Days," and "The Whole Hog"--"A Bestiary" relates the life and times of one ...
A fictional imagining of the gentle but troubled zealot William Cowper best known as a precursor to Romantics such as Wordsworth and Burns Brian Lynch s The Winner of Sorrow brings to life the mind and times of an eighteenth-century poet. Intense and exhilarating, this is literary fiction at its finest the reader will be hard-pressed not to rush ahead to see what happens next. Yet you ll want to savor every word as Lynch traces Cowper s tragic descent into madness, which is presented matter-of-factly so that the novel is not sentimental but austere, not precious but serious, and yet,...
A fictional imagining of the gentle but troubled zealot William Cowper best known as a precursor to Romantics such as Wordsworth and Burns Brian Lynch...
Writing the Sky: Observations and Essays on Dermot Healy is a comprehensive collection of critical essays, memoirs, poetry, and other writerly responses devoted to the life and work of the late Dermot Healy (1947-2014). Healy was an accomplished poet, short story writer, novelist, playwright, and editor, and so these essays and observations address the entire range of his eclectic and exciting oeuvre. While paying due tribute to the memory of the man himself, the collection primarily seeks to establish a series of important critical perspectives through which Healy s writings can be properly...
Writing the Sky: Observations and Essays on Dermot Healy is a comprehensive collection of critical essays, memoirs, poetry, and other writerly respons...
Although Dermot Healy (1947-2014) is probably best known as an award-winning novelist and poet, he was also a prolific playwright, screenwriter, and actor. Healy s interest in drama was long-standing, and was central to his development as a writer. Between 1985 and 2010 he wrote thirteen stage plays, including a critically-acclaimed adaptation of Garcia Lorca s
Blood Wedding in 1989. All of these plays are published here for the first time. One of the most striking features of Healy s dramatic works is their spirit of community collaboration and their strong social conscience. His first...
Although Dermot Healy (1947-2014) is probably best known as an award-winning novelist and poet, he was also a prolific playwright, screenwriter, an...
When Albert Jackson, a middle-aged school teacher, catches a glimpse of the infinite universe and his own tiny insignificance he cannot shake himself free of regret for a life all but squandered. In a blind and demented attempt to salvage something from his life, he sets off, half-lucidly, on a libertine mission to reclaim life, to live it exclusively on his terms. But the wild and sinister crime he plots, so characterised by delusion, sets him on a path to irreversible destruction.
Incarcerated after his crime, at the once prestigious Reil Institute, and in a bid to make spiritual...
When Albert Jackson, a middle-aged school teacher, catches a glimpse of the infinite universe and his own tiny insignificance he cannot shake himse...
Originally published in 1926, King Goshawk and the Birds is the first installment of O'Duffy's Cuanduine trilogy, which also included The Spacious Adventures of the Man in the Street (1928) and Asses in Clover (1933). Set in a future world devastated by the development of capitalism, King Goshawk concerns the eponymous tyrant's attempt to buy all of the wildflowers and songbirds in Ireland, and the attempt by a Dublin philosopher as well as a number of mythical heroes of Irish tradition to stop him.
Originally published in 1926, King Goshawk and the Birds is the first installment of O'Duffy's Cuanduine trilogy, which also included The Sp...
Irish writing is currently enjoying a renaissance. Strange, original talents are blossoming, wielding styles and perspectives as variant as the inspirations they bring to bear on their work. The Other Irish Tradition seeks to situate this recent flowering within the centuries-long efforts of Irish writers to experiment and to innovate, to make the form of the novel new and strange again. From Laurence Sterne to Flann O'Brien and beyond, this anthology presents both highly familiar and relatively obscure writers from across the history of Irish fiction, offering a fresh perspective on...
Irish writing is currently enjoying a renaissance. Strange, original talents are blossoming, wielding styles and perspectives as variant as the inspir...
This volume collects new short stories from one of Ireland's leading writers in both the Irish and English languages. Eilis Ni Dhuibhne's stories are widely acclaimed for their acute perception of Irish women's lives, the power of her verbal economy, and her skillful and unique use of both humor and the fantastic.
This volume collects new short stories from one of Ireland's leading writers in both the Irish and English languages. Eilis Ni Dhuibhne's stories are ...
