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202.125 28.88 181.875 41.38 169.375C53.88 156.875 74.13 156.875 86.63 169.375L256 338.8L425.4 169.4C437.9 156.9 458.15 156.9 470.65 169.4C483.15 181.9 483.15 202.15 470.65 214.65L278.65 406.65C272.4 412.9 264.2 416 256 416Z"></path></svg></span></button></div><div class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-container "><ul class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-menu" id="header_sub_section_sport"><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/sport/gaelic-games" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Gaelic Games</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/sport/rugby" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Rugby</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/sport/soccer" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Soccer</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/sport/golf" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Golf</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/sport/racing" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Racing</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/sport/athletics" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Athletics</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/sport/boxing" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Boxing</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/sport/cycling" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Cycling</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/sport/hockey" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Hockey</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/sport/tennis" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Tennis</a></li></ul></div></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><div data-testid="nav-chain-section-item-subsection" class="c-stack b-header-nav-chain__subsection-anchor subsection-anchor " data-style-direction="horizontal" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="center" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><a class="c-link" href="/your-money" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Your Money</a><button aria-expanded="false" aria-controls="header_sub_section_your-money" aria-label="Show Your Money sub sections" class="c-button c-button--medium c-button--default submenu-caret" type="button"><span><svg class="c-icon" width="20" height="20" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 512 512" fill="currentColor" aria-hidden="true" focusable="false"><path d="M256 416C247.812 416 239.62 412.875 233.38 406.625L41.38 214.625C28.88 202.125 28.88 181.875 41.38 169.375C53.88 156.875 74.13 156.875 86.63 169.375L256 338.8L425.4 169.4C437.9 156.9 458.15 156.9 470.65 169.4C483.15 181.9 483.15 202.15 470.65 214.65L278.65 406.65C272.4 412.9 264.2 416 256 416Z"></path></svg></span></button></div><div class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-container "><ul class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-menu" id="header_sub_section_your-money"><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/tags/pricewatch" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Pricewatch</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/budget/" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Budget 2025</a></li></ul></div></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><div data-testid="nav-chain-section-item-subsection" class="c-stack b-header-nav-chain__subsection-anchor subsection-anchor " data-style-direction="horizontal" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="center" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><a class="c-link" href="/crime-law" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Crime & Law</a><button aria-expanded="false" aria-controls="header_sub_section_crime-law" aria-label="Show Crime & Law sub sections" class="c-button c-button--medium c-button--default submenu-caret" type="button"><span><svg class="c-icon" width="20" height="20" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 512 512" fill="currentColor" aria-hidden="true" focusable="false"><path d="M256 416C247.812 416 239.62 412.875 233.38 406.625L41.38 214.625C28.88 202.125 28.88 181.875 41.38 169.375C53.88 156.875 74.13 156.875 86.63 169.375L256 338.8L425.4 169.4C437.9 156.9 458.15 156.9 470.65 169.4C483.15 181.9 483.15 202.15 470.65 214.65L278.65 406.65C272.4 412.9 264.2 416 256 416Z"></path></svg></span></button></div><div class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-container "><ul class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-menu" id="header_sub_section_crime-law"><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/crime-law/courts" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Courts</a></li></ul></div></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><div data-testid="nav-chain-section-item-subsection" class="c-stack b-header-nav-chain__subsection-anchor subsection-anchor " data-style-direction="horizontal" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="center" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><a class="c-link" href="/property" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Property</a><button aria-expanded="false" aria-controls="header_sub_section_property" aria-label="Show Property sub sections" class="c-button c-button--medium c-button--default submenu-caret" type="button"><span><svg class="c-icon" width="20" height="20" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 512 512" fill="currentColor" aria-hidden="true" focusable="false"><path d="M256 416C247.812 416 239.62 412.875 233.38 406.625L41.38 214.625C28.88 202.125 28.88 181.875 41.38 169.375C53.88 156.875 74.13 156.875 86.63 169.375L256 338.8L425.4 169.4C437.9 156.9 458.15 156.9 470.65 169.4C483.15 181.9 483.15 202.15 470.65 214.65L278.65 406.65C272.4 412.9 264.2 416 256 416Z"></path></svg></span></button></div><div class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-container "><ul class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-menu" id="header_sub_section_property"><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/property/residential" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Residential</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/property/commercial-property" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Commercial Property</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/property/interiors" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Interiors</a></li></ul></div></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><div data-testid="nav-chain-section-item-subsection" class="c-stack b-header-nav-chain__subsection-anchor subsection-anchor " data-style-direction="horizontal" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="center" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><a class="c-link" href="/food" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Food</a><button aria-expanded="false" aria-controls="header_sub_section_food" aria-label="Show Food sub sections" class="c-button c-button--medium c-button--default submenu-caret" type="button"><span><svg class="c-icon" width="20" height="20" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 512 512" fill="currentColor" aria-hidden="true" focusable="false"><path d="M256 416C247.812 416 239.62 412.875 233.38 406.625L41.38 214.625C28.88 202.125 28.88 181.875 41.38 169.375C53.88 156.875 74.13 156.875 86.63 169.375L256 338.8L425.4 169.4C437.9 156.9 458.15 156.9 470.65 169.4C483.15 181.9 483.15 202.15 470.65 214.65L278.65 406.65C272.4 412.9 264.2 416 256 416Z"></path></svg></span></button></div><div class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-container "><ul class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-menu" id="header_sub_section_food"><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/food/drink" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Drink</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/food/recipes" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Recipes</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/food/restaurants" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Restaurants</a></li></ul></div></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><div data-testid="nav-chain-section-item-subsection" class="c-stack b-header-nav-chain__subsection-anchor subsection-anchor " data-style-direction="horizontal" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="center" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><a class="c-link" href="/health" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Health</a><button aria-expanded="false" aria-controls="header_sub_section_health" aria-label="Show Health sub sections" class="c-button c-button--medium c-button--default submenu-caret" type="button"><span><svg class="c-icon" width="20" height="20" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 512 512" fill="currentColor" aria-hidden="true" focusable="false"><path d="M256 416C247.812 416 239.62 412.875 233.38 406.625L41.38 214.625C28.88 202.125 28.88 181.875 41.38 169.375C53.88 156.875 74.13 156.875 86.63 169.375L256 338.8L425.4 169.4C437.9 156.9 458.15 156.9 470.65 169.4C483.15 181.9 483.15 202.15 470.65 214.65L278.65 406.65C272.4 412.9 264.2 416 256 416Z"></path></svg></span></button></div><div class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-container "><ul class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-menu" id="header_sub_section_health"><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/health/your-family" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Your Family</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/health/your-fitness" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Your Fitness</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/health/your-wellness" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Your Wellness</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/health/your-fitness/get-running" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Get Running</a></li></ul></div></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><div data-testid="nav-chain-section-item-subsection" class="c-stack b-header-nav-chain__subsection-anchor subsection-anchor " data-style-direction="horizontal" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="center" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><a class="c-link" href="/life-style" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Life & Style</a><button aria-expanded="false" aria-controls="header_sub_section_life-style" aria-label="Show Life & Style sub sections" class="c-button c-button--medium c-button--default submenu-caret" type="button"><span><svg class="c-icon" width="20" height="20" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 512 512" fill="currentColor" aria-hidden="true" focusable="false"><path d="M256 416C247.812 416 239.62 412.875 233.38 406.625L41.38 214.625C28.88 202.125 28.88 181.875 41.38 169.375C53.88 156.875 74.13 156.875 86.63 169.375L256 338.8L425.4 169.4C437.9 156.9 458.15 156.9 470.65 169.4C483.15 181.9 483.15 202.15 470.65 214.65L278.65 406.65C272.4 412.9 264.2 416 256 416Z"></path></svg></span></button></div><div class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-container "><ul class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-menu" id="header_sub_section_life-style"><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/life-style/fashion" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Fashion</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/tags/beauty/" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Beauty</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/life-style/fine-art-antiques" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Fine Art & Antiques</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/life-style/gardening" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Gardening</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/life-style/people" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">People</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/life-style/travel" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Travel</a></li></ul></div></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><div data-testid="nav-chain-section-item-subsection" class="c-stack b-header-nav-chain__subsection-anchor subsection-anchor " data-style-direction="horizontal" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="center" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><a class="c-link" href="/culture" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Culture</a><button aria-expanded="false" aria-controls="header_sub_section_culture" aria-label="Show Culture sub sections" class="c-button c-button--medium c-button--default submenu-caret" type="button"><span><svg class="c-icon" width="20" height="20" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 512 512" fill="currentColor" aria-hidden="true" focusable="false"><path d="M256 416C247.812 416 239.62 412.875 233.38 406.625L41.38 214.625C28.88 202.125 28.88 181.875 41.38 169.375C53.88 156.875 74.13 156.875 86.63 169.375L256 338.8L425.4 169.4C437.9 156.9 458.15 156.9 470.65 169.4C483.15 181.9 483.15 202.15 470.65 214.65L278.65 406.65C272.4 412.9 264.2 416 256 416Z"></path></svg></span></button></div><div class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-container "><ul class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-menu" id="header_sub_section_culture"><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/culture/art" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Art</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/culture/books" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Books</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/culture/film" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Film</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/culture/music" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Music</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/culture/stage" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Stage</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/culture/tv-radio" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">TV & Radio</a></li></ul></div></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><div data-testid="nav-chain-section-item-subsection" class="c-stack b-header-nav-chain__subsection-anchor subsection-anchor " data-style-direction="horizontal" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="center" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><a class="c-link" href="/environment" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Environment</a><button aria-expanded="false" aria-controls="header_sub_section_environment" aria-label="Show Environment sub sections" class="c-button c-button--medium c-button--default submenu-caret" type="button"><span><svg class="c-icon" width="20" height="20" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 512 512" fill="currentColor" aria-hidden="true" focusable="false"><path d="M256 416C247.812 416 239.62 412.875 233.38 406.625L41.38 214.625C28.88 202.125 28.88 181.875 41.38 169.375C53.88 156.875 74.13 156.875 86.63 169.375L256 338.8L425.4 169.4C437.9 156.9 458.15 156.9 470.65 169.4C483.15 181.9 483.15 202.15 470.65 214.65L278.65 406.65C272.4 412.9 264.2 416 256 416Z"></path></svg></span></button></div><div class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-container "><ul class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-menu" id="header_sub_section_environment"><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/environment/climate-crisis" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Climate Crisis</a></li></ul></div></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><div data-testid="nav-chain-section-item-subsection" class="c-stack b-header-nav-chain__subsection-anchor subsection-anchor " data-style-direction="horizontal" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="center" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><a class="c-link" href="/technology" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Technology</a><button aria-expanded="false" aria-controls="header_sub_section_technology" aria-label="Show Technology sub sections" class="c-button c-button--medium c-button--default submenu-caret" type="button"><span><svg class="c-icon" width="20" height="20" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 512 512" fill="currentColor" aria-hidden="true" focusable="false"><path d="M256 416C247.812 416 239.62 412.875 233.38 406.625L41.38 214.625C28.88 202.125 28.88 181.875 41.38 169.375C53.88 156.875 74.13 156.875 86.63 169.375L256 338.8L425.4 169.4C437.9 156.9 458.15 156.9 470.65 169.4C483.15 181.9 483.15 202.15 470.65 214.65L278.65 406.65C272.4 412.9 264.2 416 256 416Z"></path></svg></span></button></div><div class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-container "><ul class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-menu" id="header_sub_section_technology"><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/technology/big-tech" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Big Tech</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/technology/consumer-tech" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Consumer Tech</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/technology/data-security" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Data & Security</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/technology/gaming" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Gaming</a></li></ul></div></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><div data-testid="nav-chain-section-item-subsection" class="c-stack b-header-nav-chain__subsection-anchor subsection-anchor " data-style-direction="horizontal" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="center" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><a class="c-link" href="/science" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Science</a><button aria-expanded="false" aria-controls="header_sub_section_science" 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srcSet="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/JCIQP7WOUZF3JFXVVNXOEKNDHM.png?auth=db63580194dcb9685252251710cb7292e48ccc8d30ffa0df638fa285894e06f3&focal=629%2C353&width=1600&height=1200" width="1600"/><source height="1440" media="(min-width: 768px)" srcSet="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/JCIQP7WOUZF3JFXVVNXOEKNDHM.png?auth=db63580194dcb9685252251710cb7292e48ccc8d30ffa0df638fa285894e06f3&focal=629%2C353&width=1440&height=1440" width="1440"/><img data-chromatic="ignore" alt="The Irish Times best books of 2024" class="c-image" loading="lazy" src="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/JCIQP7WOUZF3JFXVVNXOEKNDHM.png?auth=db63580194dcb9685252251710cb7292e48ccc8d30ffa0df638fa285894e06f3&focal=629%2C353&width=800&height=1440" width="800" height="1440"/></picture><div class="c-stack b-mini-site-chain__children" data-style-direction="vertical" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="unset" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><div><h1 class="b-it-headline align-center font-normal color-white">The Irish Times best books of 2024: Anne Enright, John Boyne, Joseph O’Connor, Mia Levitin and more reveal their favourites</h1></div></div><div class="b-mini-site-chain__gradient"></div></div></div><div class="c-stack b-it-slim-content__body" data-style-direction="vertical" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="unset" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><div class="c-grid b-it-overline-block"><div class="c-stack wrap" data-style-direction="horizontal" data-style-justification="center" data-style-alignment="start" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap" style="--c-stack-gap:0"><span class="c-pill c-it-subscriber-pill b-it-overline-block__subscriber-pill">Subscriber Only</span><span class="c-stack b-it-overline-block__text" data-style-direction="horizontal" data-style-justification="center" data-style-alignment="center" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="wrap"><a class="c-link false" href="/culture/books/">Books</a></span></div></div><h2 class="b-it-subheadline align-center ">Books by Sally Rooney, Ferdia Lennon, Miranda July, Donal Ryan, Mary Costello, Alan Hollinghurst and Christine Dwyer Hickey feature prominently among the year’s best titles</h2><div class="c-stack b-it-byline-block" data-style-direction="horizontal" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="center" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><div class="b-it-byline-block__author-image"><div style="aspect-ratio:118 / 118;background-color:var(--global-neutral-1)" class="c-it-placeholder"><img data-chromatic="ignore" alt="Martin Doyle's picture " class="c-image" loading="lazy" src="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/https%3A%2F%2Fs3.amazonaws.com%2Farc-authors%2Firishtimes%2Ff59da41d-80df-4aaa-a086-a7a7458a5268.png?auth=b0feb8badcc37df2dd380c0155433c0cafd4f231a961c72f78dbe3cf63947203&width=118" 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class="author"><span class="author-name"><a class="c-link" href="/author/martin-doyle/">Martin Doyle</a></span></div><div class="b-it-byline-block__date">Sat Nov 30 2024 - 05:00</div></div></div><div class="c-grid b-it-social-share-block b-it-social-share-block__space-above"><div class="c-stack b-it-social-share-block__container" data-style-direction="horizontal" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="start" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><ul class="c-stack b-it-social-share-block__main-section main_section" data-style-direction="horizontal" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="center" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap" style="--c-stack-gap:0"><li><a href="" title="Listen | 20:02" class="b-it-social-share-block__link social_share_btn_tts article-play-sub-btn" rel="nofollow"><svg class="c-icon" width="48" height="48" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 512 512" fill="currentColor" aria-hidden="true" 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class="b-it-social-share-block__link social_share_btn_print " rel="nofollow"><svg class="c-icon" width="48" height="48" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 512 512" fill="currentColor" aria-hidden="true" focusable="false"><path d="M448 192V77.25c0-8.49-3.37-16.62-9.37-22.63L393.37 9.37c-6-6-14.14-9.37-22.63-9.37H96C78.33 0 64 14.33 64 32v160c-35.35 0-64 28.65-64 64v112c0 8.84 7.16 16 16 16h48v96c0 17.67 14.33 32 32 32h320c17.67 0 32-14.33 32-32v-96h48c8.84 0 16-7.16 16-16V256c0-35.35-28.65-64-64-64zm-64 256H128v-96h256v96zm0-224H128V64h192v48c0 8.84 7.16 16 16 16h48v96zm48 72c-13.25 0-24-10.75-24-24 0-13.26 10.75-24 24-24s24 10.74 24 24c0 13.25-10.75 24-24 24z"></path></svg></a></li></ul></div></div></li></ul></div></div><article class="b-it-article-body article-body-wrapper article-sub-wrapper"><h4 class="b-it-article-body__h4 paywall">Anne Enright</h4><p class="c-paragraph">Question 7 by Richard Flanagan is one of those books where a writer bundles up his entire life and hurls it on to the page. I also loved <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/10/11/stone-yard-devotional-by-charlotte-wood-bone-bare-prose-offers-the-space-to-dwell-in-questions/" target="_blank">Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood</a> and <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/10/12/the-safekeep-by-yael-van-der-wouden-beguiling-love-story-told-in-language-that-entertains-and-enthrals/" target="_blank">The Safekeep by Yael Van der Wouden</a>, which is brilliant on withheld rage and desire. I can join the groundswell of praise for another passionate and distinctive debut, Ferdia Lennon’s Glorious Exploits. The book I found most eye-opening was Code Dependent: Living in the Shadow of AI by Madhumita Murgia, which tells you everything you don’t want to know (but really should) about data tech.</p><ul class="c-unordered-list paywall"><li class="c-list-item paywall"><i>Anne Enright’s latest novel is The Wren, The Wren</i></li></ul><h4 class="b-it-article-body__h4 paywall">John Boyne</h4><p class="c-paragraph paywall">My book of the year is Small Rain by Garth Greenwell, one of the US’s finest novelists. He found himself doubled over in pain in a non-Covid-related incident during the pandemic, which led to a prolonged hospital stay. His affliction baffled doctors so much that he became a person of interest to medics of all disciplines. While they seek ways to treat him, Greenwell veers between stoicism, fear, missing his beloved partner, and worrying about his home. Rarely has illness made for such a compelling read.</p><ul class="c-unordered-list paywall"><li class="c-list-item paywall"><i>John Boyne’s latest novel is Fire</i></li></ul><h4 class="b-it-article-body__h4 paywall">Sarah Moss</h4><p class="c-paragraph paywall">End times bring out greatness in some writers. Kathleen Jamie published a new essay collection, <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/07/06/cairn-by-kathleen-jamie-poetic-meditation-on-climate-change-and-global-instability/" target="_blank">Cairn</a> (I feel this should be all one needs to say, but if you haven’t read her, do). The best writing about the domestic arts is always also writing about resistance to despair: I recommend Caroline Eden’s Cold Kitchen for culinary meditations from a war correspondent. <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/01/27/spent-light-by-lara-pawson-an-innovative-hybrid-of-fiction-and-autobiography/" target="_blank">Lara Pawson’s Spent Light</a>, disturbing and funny hybrid prose, has stayed with me since I read it last spring. I enjoyed the Shetland poet Jen Hadfield’s beautifully-crafted memoir, Storm Pegs.</p><ul class="c-unordered-list paywall"><li class="c-list-item paywall"><i>Sarah Moss’s latest book is My Good Bright Wolf: A Memoir</i></li></ul><h4 class="b-it-article-body__h4 paywall">Joseph O’Connor</h4><p class="c-paragraph paywall"><a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/04/22/the-amendments-by-niamh-mulvey-what-it-means-to-be-female-through-different-generations/" target="_blank">Niamh Mulvey’s debut novel The Amendments</a> is a fine achievement from a writer of rare gifts. Every novel by Donal Ryan extends his deserved reputation; I adored his <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/08/20/heart-be-at-peace-by-donal-ryan-companion-novel-to-the-spinning-heart-returns-to-the-approach-that-won-him-such-acclaim/" target="_blank">Heart, Be at Peace</a>. I’ve loved John Cooper Clarke’s poems and performances since first encountering them as a teenager; his 2024 collection, What, is brilliant. My book of the year is Joe Boyd’s And the Roots of Rhythm Remain: a wonderfully knowledgeable and discursive travelogue of world music, detailed, loving, incisive and beautifully written. Jack Fennell’s anthology of lost Irish ghost stories, Your Own Dark Shadow, is a knockout.</p><div id="fusion-static-enter:html-block-f0fc3QAjj3SVaXs-3-5-0" style="display:none" data-fusion-component="html-block-f0fc3QAjj3SVaXs-3-5-0"></div><div><div style="border-block-start: 4px solid var(--global-neutral-2);font-family:var(--font-family-secondary);font-weight: var(--c-heading-font-weight);font-size:1.1rem; padding-top:0.8rem;margin-top:2rem;">READ MORE</div></div><div id="fusion-static-exit:html-block-f0fc3QAjj3SVaXs-3-5-0" style="display:none" data-fusion-component="html-block-f0fc3QAjj3SVaXs-3-5-0"></div><div class="c-grid b-top-table-list"><div class="c-grid b-top-table-list-small-container b-top-table-list-small-container--3"><article class="c-grid b-top-table-list-small b-top-table-list-small--right"><h2 class="c-heading"><a class="c-link" 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href="/culture/books/2024/12/01/amitav-ghosh-ireland-is-where-the-british-created-all-their-colonial-methods-its-where-they-tried-it-out-first/">Amitav Ghosh: ‘Ireland is where the British created all their colonial methods, it’s where they tried it out first’</a></h2><a class="c-link" href="/culture/books/2024/12/01/amitav-ghosh-ireland-is-where-the-british-created-all-their-colonial-methods-its-where-they-tried-it-out-first/" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"><figure class="c-media-item"><img data-chromatic="ignore" alt="Amitav Ghosh: ‘Ireland is where the British created all their colonial methods, it’s where they tried it out first’" class="c-image" loading="lazy" src="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/BSYMYMRWC5EUJNJDFNAHCSEE5I.jpg?smart=true&auth=e70ba5b7bccf8ab728e2be9f546d91cfc2bbedac11d268138c6592dc8ec39b85&width=800&height=533" srcSet="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/BSYMYMRWC5EUJNJDFNAHCSEE5I.jpg?smart=true&auth=e70ba5b7bccf8ab728e2be9f546d91cfc2bbedac11d268138c6592dc8ec39b85&width=400&height=266 400w, https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/BSYMYMRWC5EUJNJDFNAHCSEE5I.jpg?smart=true&auth=e70ba5b7bccf8ab728e2be9f546d91cfc2bbedac11d268138c6592dc8ec39b85&width=600&height=399 600w, https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/BSYMYMRWC5EUJNJDFNAHCSEE5I.jpg?smart=true&auth=e70ba5b7bccf8ab728e2be9f546d91cfc2bbedac11d268138c6592dc8ec39b85&width=800&height=533 800w, https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/BSYMYMRWC5EUJNJDFNAHCSEE5I.jpg?smart=true&auth=e70ba5b7bccf8ab728e2be9f546d91cfc2bbedac11d268138c6592dc8ec39b85&width=1200&height=799 1200w" width="800" height="533"/></figure></a><hr class="c-divider"/></article><article class="c-grid b-top-table-list-small b-top-table-list-small--right"><h2 class="c-heading"><a class="c-link" href="/culture/books/review/2024/12/01/crime-fiction-new-works-by-nick-harkaway-louise-penny-scott-phillips-david-safier-and-jane-casey/">Crime fiction: New works by Nick Harkaway, Louise Penny, Scott Phillips, David Safier and Jane Casey</a></h2><a class="c-link" href="/culture/books/review/2024/12/01/crime-fiction-new-works-by-nick-harkaway-louise-penny-scott-phillips-david-safier-and-jane-casey/" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"><figure class="c-media-item"><img data-chromatic="ignore" alt="Crime fiction: New works by Nick Harkaway, Louise Penny, Scott Phillips, David Safier and Jane Casey" class="c-image" loading="lazy" src="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/4GKINDSOKBGDDDEQYKW2RKZJNQ.jpg?focal=943%2C667&auth=93cc47e7c97b3a594b7611950f4ac6b4dd2f95d4c72a7e47d21ef284ff578bf2&width=800&height=533" srcSet="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/4GKINDSOKBGDDDEQYKW2RKZJNQ.jpg?focal=943%2C667&auth=93cc47e7c97b3a594b7611950f4ac6b4dd2f95d4c72a7e47d21ef284ff578bf2&width=400&height=266 400w, https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/4GKINDSOKBGDDDEQYKW2RKZJNQ.jpg?focal=943%2C667&auth=93cc47e7c97b3a594b7611950f4ac6b4dd2f95d4c72a7e47d21ef284ff578bf2&width=600&height=399 600w, https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/4GKINDSOKBGDDDEQYKW2RKZJNQ.jpg?focal=943%2C667&auth=93cc47e7c97b3a594b7611950f4ac6b4dd2f95d4c72a7e47d21ef284ff578bf2&width=800&height=533 800w, https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/4GKINDSOKBGDDDEQYKW2RKZJNQ.jpg?focal=943%2C667&auth=93cc47e7c97b3a594b7611950f4ac6b4dd2f95d4c72a7e47d21ef284ff578bf2&width=1200&height=799 1200w" width="800" height="533"/></figure></a><hr class="c-divider"/></article></div></div><ul class="c-unordered-list paywall"><li class="c-list-item paywall"><i>Joseph O’Connor’s novel The Ghosts of Rome, a sequel to My Father’s House, is published in January</i></li></ul><div class=" paywall"><figure class="c-media-item"><div style="aspect-ratio:800 / 533;background-color:var(--global-neutral-1)" class=""><img data-chromatic="ignore" alt="Niamh Mulvey, author of The Amendments. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw" class="c-image" loading="lazy" src="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/DJVNVDMV2FAP5MLOZ2CMPKFGBM.JPG?auth=df5dd7245adef31643de30c3e3ac45b5c3759763e512d53c6c26b3e57360ee29&width=800&height=533" srcSet="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/DJVNVDMV2FAP5MLOZ2CMPKFGBM.JPG?auth=df5dd7245adef31643de30c3e3ac45b5c3759763e512d53c6c26b3e57360ee29&width=400&height=266 400w, https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/DJVNVDMV2FAP5MLOZ2CMPKFGBM.JPG?auth=df5dd7245adef31643de30c3e3ac45b5c3759763e512d53c6c26b3e57360ee29&width=440&height=293 440w, https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/DJVNVDMV2FAP5MLOZ2CMPKFGBM.JPG?auth=df5dd7245adef31643de30c3e3ac45b5c3759763e512d53c6c26b3e57360ee29&width=800&height=533 800w, https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/DJVNVDMV2FAP5MLOZ2CMPKFGBM.JPG?auth=df5dd7245adef31643de30c3e3ac45b5c3759763e512d53c6c26b3e57360ee29&width=1024&height=682 1024w, https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/DJVNVDMV2FAP5MLOZ2CMPKFGBM.JPG?auth=df5dd7245adef31643de30c3e3ac45b5c3759763e512d53c6c26b3e57360ee29&width=1440&height=959 1440w" sizes="(max-width: 400px) 400px, (max-width: 440px) 440px, (max-width: 800px) 800px, (max-width: 1024px) 1024px, (min-width: 1025px) 1440px" width="800" height="533"/></div><figcaption class="c-media-item__fig-caption"><span class="c-media-item__caption">Niamh Mulvey, author of The Amendments. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw </span></figcaption></figure></div><h4 class="b-it-article-body__h4 paywall">Mark O’Connell</h4><p class="c-paragraph paywall">Hari Kunzru is, I think, a weirdly underrated writer. It’s not that he’s ignored – far from it, he’s very successful, and has been for many years now. But I think the extent to which his fiction plumbs the depths of our terminal-stage capitalist malaise, while also being compulsively entertaining, deserves to have a lot more fuss made of it. Blue Ruin is the third in his “Three Colours” trilogy, following White Tears and the incredible Red Pill. It has a thrillerish pace, and a cold-blooded intellectualism reminiscent of mid-period Don DeLillo.</p><ul class="c-unordered-list paywall"><li class="c-list-item paywall"><i>Mark O’Connell’s latest book is A Thread of Violence</i></li></ul><h4 class="b-it-article-body__h4 paywall">Kit de Waal</h4><p class="c-paragraph paywall">My book of the year is Donal Ryan’s Heart, Be at Peace. Ryan has a way of getting a whole character and a whole life down on a few pages, sometimes a few paragraphs. In overlapping and intertwined voices, we’re picking up where his previous masterpiece The Spinning Heart left off. Is it possible to say a work of fiction is true? Well, this is and once again, it’s a book that stays with you well beyond the last page.</p><div id="arcad-feature-f0fuQba8T6Jr6YD-3-5-3-e6722f0bdf90b" class="default__StyledAdUnit-sc-1moicrg-0 gKEhzJ arcad-feature"><div class="arcad-container width_100" style="max-width:728px"><div id="arcad_f0fuQba8T6Jr6YD-3-5-3-e6722f0bdf90b" class="arcad ad-728x90"></div></div></div><ul class="c-unordered-list paywall"><li class="c-list-item paywall"><i>Kit de Waal’s new novel, The Best if Everything, is out next April</i></li></ul><h4 class="b-it-article-body__h4 paywall">Diarmaid Ferriter</h4><p class="c-paragraph paywall"><a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/08/20/heart-be-at-peace-by-donal-ryan-companion-novel-to-the-spinning-heart-returns-to-the-approach-that-won-him-such-acclaim/" target="_blank">Donal Ryan’s Heart, Be at Peace</a> is enthralling. He captures such a range of emotion, defiance, eloquence, crudity and dark humour, in brilliant prose that makes him stand out in a crowded and rich Irish literary space. <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/02/24/remembering-peasants-fascinating-study-makes-for-essential-reading-about-our-shared-past/" target="_blank">Patrick Joyce’s Remembering Peasants: A Personal History of a Vanishing World</a> gives agency to the people of the land as he excavates the peasant experiences across Europe, placing the Irish dimension and his personal connection to it in a broader context. Given the dark politics of this year, <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/05/11/a-great-disorder-by-richard-slotkin-ambitious-mapping-of-americas-past-to-its-present-via-myth/" target="_blank">Richard Slotkin’s A Great Disorder</a> is a timely and textured reminder of the exploitation of national myths and how and why the US is so divided.</p><ul class="c-unordered-list paywall"><li class="c-list-item paywall"><i>Diarmaid Ferriter’s latest book is The Revelation of Ireland 1995-2020</i></li></ul><div class=" paywall"><figure class="c-media-item"><div style="aspect-ratio:800 / 532;background-color:var(--global-neutral-1)" class=""><img data-chromatic="ignore" alt="Alan Hollinghurst. Photograph: Alan Betson" class="c-image" loading="lazy" src="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/BX6POJ477VMRTGR4VNCX4HKPZI.jpg?auth=85f3abaf228c81b99687ad69df80137b2b1be2cc81d52b6eb61d7fe95cc3ea49&width=800&height=532" srcSet="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/BX6POJ477VMRTGR4VNCX4HKPZI.jpg?auth=85f3abaf228c81b99687ad69df80137b2b1be2cc81d52b6eb61d7fe95cc3ea49&width=400&height=266 400w, https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/BX6POJ477VMRTGR4VNCX4HKPZI.jpg?auth=85f3abaf228c81b99687ad69df80137b2b1be2cc81d52b6eb61d7fe95cc3ea49&width=440&height=292 440w, https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/BX6POJ477VMRTGR4VNCX4HKPZI.jpg?auth=85f3abaf228c81b99687ad69df80137b2b1be2cc81d52b6eb61d7fe95cc3ea49&width=800&height=532 800w, https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/BX6POJ477VMRTGR4VNCX4HKPZI.jpg?auth=85f3abaf228c81b99687ad69df80137b2b1be2cc81d52b6eb61d7fe95cc3ea49&width=1024&height=680 1024w, https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/BX6POJ477VMRTGR4VNCX4HKPZI.jpg?auth=85f3abaf228c81b99687ad69df80137b2b1be2cc81d52b6eb61d7fe95cc3ea49&width=1440&height=957 1440w" sizes="(max-width: 400px) 400px, (max-width: 440px) 440px, (max-width: 800px) 800px, (max-width: 1024px) 1024px, (min-width: 1025px) 1440px" width="800" height="532"/></div><figcaption class="c-media-item__fig-caption"><span class="c-media-item__caption">Alan Hollinghurst. Photograph: Alan Betson </span></figcaption></figure></div><h4 class="b-it-article-body__h4 paywall">Julia Kelly</h4><p class="c-paragraph paywall">Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst is my book of the year. Reading his prose is like sinking into a bath of the perfect temperature, with his exquisite use of language and extraordinary powers of description. I also loved <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/06/15/all-fours-by-miranda-july-one-womans-quest-for-life-after-midlife/" target="_blank">All Fours by Miranda July</a>, a wild, bawdy, horny, hilarious escape from the reality of a menopausal wife and mother into an alternative fantasy, an existence where she can express her sexual and artistic desires with unfettered freedom.</p><ul class="c-unordered-list paywall"><li class="c-list-item paywall"><i>Julia Kelly’s fourth book, Still, will be published next September</i></li></ul><h4 class="b-it-article-body__h4 paywall">Malachy Clerkin</h4><p class="c-paragraph paywall"><a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/06/22/the-racket-by-conor-niland-lonely-tennis-locker-room-conveyed-with-deft-touch/" target="_blank">The Racket by Conor Niland and Gavin Cooney</a> is a fantastic – and deservedly prize-winning – trek through the nearly-but-not-quite backroads of professional tennis. <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/10/12/obsessed-the-autobiography-by-johnny-sexton-one-of-the-best-irish-sports-books-ever-written/" target="_blank">Obsessed by Johnny Sexton and Peter O’Reilly</a> is a laudably searching examination of the psyche of one of Ireland’s greatest ever sportspeople. <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/11/09/states-of-play-how-sportswashing-took-over-football-by-miguel-delaney-admirably-thorough-depressingly-persuasive/" target="_blank">States of Play by Miguel Delaney</a> paints a detailed and often grotesque picture of how soccer has found itself hijacked by money and sportswashing. Finally, My Story by Joe Canning and Vincent Hogan is full of searing insights into the Galway hurler’s life less ordinary.</p><ul class="c-unordered-list paywall"><li class="c-list-item paywall"><i>Malachy Clerkin is an Irish Times sports reporter</i></li></ul><div class=" paywall"><figure class="c-media-item"><div style="aspect-ratio:800 / 553;background-color:var(--global-neutral-1)" class=""><img data-chromatic="ignore" alt="Obsessed by Johnny Sexton, above, and Peter O’Reilly is a laudably searching examination of the psyche of one of Ireland’s greatest ever sportspeople. Photograph: Yoan Valat/EPA" class="c-image" loading="lazy" src="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/53JPF47GYDRYBSJVCXSZYNZGNI.jpg?auth=c5c26170e15ae9170cbfa68dd19deffffec6d3ba593906267dab580f46ffc32e&width=800&height=553" srcSet="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/53JPF47GYDRYBSJVCXSZYNZGNI.jpg?auth=c5c26170e15ae9170cbfa68dd19deffffec6d3ba593906267dab580f46ffc32e&width=400&height=276 400w, https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/53JPF47GYDRYBSJVCXSZYNZGNI.jpg?auth=c5c26170e15ae9170cbfa68dd19deffffec6d3ba593906267dab580f46ffc32e&width=440&height=304 440w, https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/53JPF47GYDRYBSJVCXSZYNZGNI.jpg?auth=c5c26170e15ae9170cbfa68dd19deffffec6d3ba593906267dab580f46ffc32e&width=800&height=553 800w, https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/53JPF47GYDRYBSJVCXSZYNZGNI.jpg?auth=c5c26170e15ae9170cbfa68dd19deffffec6d3ba593906267dab580f46ffc32e&width=1024&height=707 1024w, https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/53JPF47GYDRYBSJVCXSZYNZGNI.jpg?auth=c5c26170e15ae9170cbfa68dd19deffffec6d3ba593906267dab580f46ffc32e&width=1440&height=995 1440w" sizes="(max-width: 400px) 400px, (max-width: 440px) 440px, (max-width: 800px) 800px, (max-width: 1024px) 1024px, (min-width: 1025px) 1440px" width="800" height="553"/></div><figcaption class="c-media-item__fig-caption"><span class="c-media-item__caption">Obsessed by Johnny Sexton, above, and Peter O’Reilly is a laudably searching examination of the psyche of one of Ireland’s greatest ever sportspeople. Photograph: Yoan Valat/EPA </span></figcaption></figure></div><h4 class="b-it-article-body__h4 paywall">Fintan O’Toole</h4><p class="c-paragraph paywall">In a year stained by such widespread indifference to extreme violence against civilians in war, Cormac Ó Gráda’s The Hidden Victims: Civilian Casualties of the Two World Wars stood out as a work of great moral as well as of historical importance. One of Ireland’s greatest historians scrupulously sifts the evidence from the first and second World Wars and their “collateral damage” of genocide, famine, aerial bombing and disease. His conclusion is startling: he estimates that the wars cost not the previously accepted 35 million but 65 million civilian lives – nearly two-thirds of the 100 million total killed. Ó Gráda writes with immense care, eschewing rhetoric or appeals to the emotions, but there is always the sense that this quiet precision is an act of mourning for 30 million people who were not even given the dignity of becoming statistics. The resonances for the present are profound: this book is a potent warning against amnesia and evasion.</p><ul class="c-unordered-list paywall"><li class="c-list-item paywall"><i>Fintan O’Toole’s latest book is Shakespeare Is Hard, But so Is Life</i></li></ul><h4 class="b-it-article-body__h4 paywall">Sarah Gilmartin</h4><p class="c-paragraph paywall"><a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/02/20/the-lodgers-by-holly-pester-a-smart-superbly-crafted-story-on-the-state-of-a-nation/" target="_blank">Holly Pester’s debut The Lodgers</a> is a bracing, eloquent dissection of a generation priced out of their own home. <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/10/10/our-evenings-by-alan-hollinghurst-review-beautifully-observed-tracking-of-an-actor-into-old-age/" target="_blank">Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst</a> examines race, class, sexuality and identity in a narrative suffused with loss and longing. Three gems from the Booker longlist: <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/01/27/wild-houses-by-colin-barrett-superbly-observed-world-framed-by-crime-caper-plot/" target="_blank">Wild Houses by Colin Barrett</a>, Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel, <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/09/07/creation-lake-by-rachel-kushner-fun-devastating-and-far-more-urgent-than-a-typical-spy-thriller/" target="_blank">Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner</a>. Three intricate, and very different, story collections: Barcelona by Mary Costello, <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/04/25/old-romantics-by-maggie-armstrong-an-audacious-debut-collection-with-a-personality-all-its-own/" target="_blank">Old Romantics by Maggie Armstrong</a>, <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/05/07/openings-by-lucy-caldwell-enlightening-and-enriching-collection-of-stories-that-closes-a-loose-triptych/" target="_blank">Openings by Lucy Caldwell</a>. And for poetry fans, the moving <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/05/05/new-poetry-raptures-road-and-then-the-hare-landscape-of-the-body-all-the-good-things-you-deserve/" target="_blank">All the Good Things You Deserve by Elaine Feeney</a>.</p><ul class="c-unordered-list paywall"><li class="c-list-item paywall"><i>Sarah Gilmartin’s latest novel is Service</i></li></ul><h4 class="b-it-article-body__h4 paywall">Brian Hanley</h4><p class="c-paragraph paywall">It has been a depressing year, which perhaps influences these choices. Some impressive new histories illuminated the 20th century’s myriad tragedies; betrayed revolutionary hopes in <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/09/21/hotel-lux-by-maurice-casey-radical-politics-and-queer-love-in-the-dark-shadow-of-stalinism/" target="_blank">Maurice Casey’s Hotel Lux</a>, murder gangs and state collusion in <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/09/28/ghosts-of-a-family-review-superlative-account-of-atrocity-of-the-mcmahon-murders/" target="_blank">Edward Burke’s Ghosts of A Family</a>, despotic political “saviours” in <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/09/28/the-party-is-always-right-the-untold-story-of-gerry-healy-and-british-trotskyism-a-shocking-history-well-told/" target="_blank">Aidan Beatty’s The Party Is Always Right</a>. The fictionalised corruption brought to life in <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/02/25/best-new-crime-fiction-joe-thomass-red-menace-is-an-early-candidate-for-crime-novel-of-the-year/" target="_blank">Joe Thomas’s Red Menace</a>, his follow-up to the excellent White Riot, seems almost benign in comparison.</p><div id="arcad-feature-f0fVXNppHnA0bqg-3-5-4-aec26e6529f05" class="default__StyledAdUnit-sc-1moicrg-0 gKEhzJ arcad-feature"><div class="arcad-container width_100" style="max-width:728px"><div id="arcad_f0fVXNppHnA0bqg-3-5-4-aec26e6529f05" class="arcad ad-728x90"></div></div></div><ul class="c-unordered-list paywall"><li class="c-list-item paywall"><i>Brian Hanley is assistant professor of history at Trinity College Dublin</i></li></ul><h4 class="b-it-article-body__h4 paywall">Sally Hayden</h4><p class="c-paragraph paywall">I read mostly older books this year, but a few new ones that I definitely recommend are Scattered by Aamna Mohdin, a Somali-British journalist whose 2015 reporting trip to Calais prompts exploration as to the journey her own family undertook to escape Somalia: The Tale of a Wall, a memoir by Nasser Abu Srour, a Palestinian who has spent decades in Israeli prison; and Chukwuebuka Ibeh’s Blessings, a moving novel about queer lives in Nigeria.</p><ul class="c-unordered-list paywall"><li class="c-list-item paywall"><i>Sally Hayden is the author of My Fourth Time, We Drowned, and writes from the Middle East and Africa for The Irish Times</i></li></ul><h4 class="b-it-article-body__h4 paywall">Donal Fallon</h4><p class="c-paragraph paywall">The Irish in the Resistance by Clodagh Finn and John Morgan is a brilliant achievement, bringing to light new stories of men and women who risked everything during the second World War. While Samuel Beckett’s role in the French Resistance is well documented (it was considerably more than what he dismissed as “boy scout stuff”), many of the names in this book will be entirely new to the reader. Great archival digging and lots of heart.</p><ul class="c-unordered-list paywall"><li class="c-list-item paywall"><i>Donal Fallon is the presenter of the Three Castles Burning podcast</i></li></ul><h4 class="b-it-article-body__h4 paywall">Sara Keating</h4><p class="c-paragraph paywall">It’s impossible to choose, but as the shortest day of the year approaches, I am reminded of two of the best children’s books of 2024: the fantastic non-fiction <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/06/08/childrens-reads-from-superbly-conceived-non-fiction-to-a-fitting-capstone-for-a-wonderful-career/" target="_blank">Solstice: The Longest, Shortest Day</a> by Jen Breach (5+) and <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/10/09/childrens-fiction-ghost-stories-for-samhain-and-tales-of-female-fearlessness/" target="_blank">Eilish Fisher’s stunning Fia and the Last Snow Deer</a>, featuring writing and illustrations of equal beauty. For a greater understanding of how we know what we know, Chris Haughton’s The History of Information (7+) is both eye-catching and essential. Finally, Vicky Cowie’s Tales from Muggleswick Wood (3+) is a bedtime treasury narrated by a grandmother with whimsical watercolours from Charlie Macksey, which will be beloved on bookshelves for generations.</p><ul class="c-unordered-list paywall"><li class="c-list-item paywall"><i>Sara Keating is a cultural journalist, with a special interest in children’s books</i></li></ul><h4 class="b-it-article-body__h4 paywall">Paul Muldoon</h4><p class="c-paragraph paywall"><a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/01/27/missing-persons-or-my-grandmothers-secrets-by-clair-wills-family-fables-hidden-truths/" target="_blank">Missing Persons, or My Grandmother’s Secrets, by Clair Wills</a>, is a book that will secure a place in the annals of 20th-century Irish social history as firmly as Twenty Years A-Growing by Maurice O’Sullivan or Heinrich Böll’s Irish Journal. This account of a cover-up within a single family resonates with a capacity to look away that too often seems to be a national characteristic. One consequence of this book might be to further tip the scales and allow us to overcome our reluctance to send the Catholic Church packing, as we would any other multinational with a comparable history of dodgy behaviour.</p><ul class="c-unordered-list paywall"><li class="c-list-item paywall"><i>Paul Muldoon’s latest work is Joy in Service on Rue Tagore</i></li></ul><h4 class="b-it-article-body__h4 paywall">Claire Adam</h4><p class="c-paragraph paywall">My Dear Kabul by an Afghan women’s writing group is an absolute gem of a memoir that deserves a place on your bookshelf and in your heart. The authors are 21 Afghan women writing secretly to each other in real time, often in WhatsApp messages, as they live through the country’s fall to the Taliban in 2021. The very act of writing is dangerous, but they’re driven by an urgent need to connect – with each other and the outside world – even as the walls close in on them.</p><ul class="c-unordered-list paywall"><li class="c-list-item paywall"><i>Claire Adam is the author of Golden Child. Her next novel, Love Forms, will be published next June</i></li></ul><h4 class="b-it-article-body__h4 paywall">Paul Howard</h4><p class="c-paragraph paywall"><a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/09/07/our-london-lives-a-masterful-work-full-of-skilful-nuance-and-profound-truth/" target="_blank">Our London Lives by Christine Dwyer Hickey</a> is a masterpiece. It’s the story of two teenage Irish emigrants living in London in 1979. Milly in a runaway from judgmental, Catholic Ireland. Pip is a young boxing hopeful with a taste for the sauce. The novel tells the story of their fleeting romance and then the stories of their occasionally interweaving lives over the course of the four decades that follow. It’s dark and heartbreaking. Beautiful storytelling by a master of the genre.</p><div id="arcad-feature-f0fYKctXj7wt6xL-3-5-5-1c1c815d40e8d1" class="default__StyledAdUnit-sc-1moicrg-0 gKEhzJ arcad-feature"><div class="arcad-container width_100" style="max-width:728px"><div id="arcad_f0fYKctXj7wt6xL-3-5-5-1c1c815d40e8d1" class="arcad ad-728x90"></div></div></div><p class="c-paragraph paywall"><i>Paul Howard’s latest book is the </i><a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/author/ross-ocarroll-kelly/" target="_blank"><i>Ross O’Carroll-Kelly</i></a><i> novel Don’t Look Back in Ongar</i></p><h4 class="b-it-article-body__h4 paywall">Éilís Ní Dhuibhne</h4><p class="c-paragraph paywall"><a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/2024/04/06/quickly-while-they-still-have-horses-review-jan-carson-delivers-a-compelling-collection/" target="_blank">Jan Carson, Quickly, While They Still Have Horses</a>, is an outstanding collection of witty short stories set in – and satirising – the North of Ireland. I loved Percival Everett’s James, and also Sarah Moss’s memoir focusing on anorexia, <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/08/24/my-good-bright-wolf-by-sarah-moss-a-bleak-often-brilliant-personal-history/" target="_blank">My Good Bright Wolf</a>. My great friends Liz McManus, Mary Rose Callaghan, Phyl Herbert, Catherine Dunne, Celia de Freine, Evelyn Conlon and Mícheál Ó Conghaile all published wonderful books during the year. They are a productive bunch!</p><ul class="c-unordered-list paywall"><li class="c-list-item paywall"><i>Éilís Ní Dhuibhne’s latest book, edited with Michaela Schage Frueh, is Well! You Don’t Look It: Women Writers in Ireland Reflect on Ageing</i></li></ul><h4 class="b-it-article-body__h4 paywall">Paul Murray</h4><p class="c-paragraph paywall"><a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/11/02/gliff-by-ali-smith-part-allegory-part-dystopian-fiction-altogether-thrilling/" target="_blank">Ali Smith’s miraculous Gliff</a> is at once a pitch-black take on the authoritarian future and a tender, hilarious and ultimately uplifting portrait of two young sisters as they battle to escape it. Full of jokes and wordplay, kindness and connection – the eponymous Gliff is a horse the girls rescue from an abattoir – it’s part novel, part resistance manual, facing into the darkness while showing a path to redemption. A ray of hope after a year like this one.</p><ul class="c-unordered-list paywall"><li class="c-list-item paywall"><i>Paul Murray’s latest novel is The Bee Sting</i></li></ul><h4 class="b-it-article-body__h4 paywall">Mia Levitin</h4><p class="c-paragraph paywall"><a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/10/12/the-safekeep-by-yael-van-der-wouden-beguiling-love-story-told-in-language-that-entertains-and-enthrals/" target="_blank">Yael van der Wouden’s The Safekeep</a>, sexy and twisty without sacrificing substance, is a marvel. Alan Hollinghurst’s Our Evenings made me weep buckets of tears, and I was in the chorus of accolades for <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/04/19/james-by-percival-everett-reimagining-huck-finn/" target="_blank">Percival Everett’s National Book Award-winning James</a>. Hattie Crisell’s In Writing is chock-full of insights about not only writing but life. And more than just a survey, <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/09/09/the-haunted-wood-a-history-of-childhood-reading-by-sam-leith-monumental-and-invigorating/" target="_blank">Sam Leith’s The Haunted Wood</a> is a tribute to the enduring importance of children’s literature.</p><ul class="c-unordered-list paywall"><li class="c-list-item paywall"><i>Mia Levitin is a critic and author of The Future of Seduction</i></li></ul><h4 class="b-it-article-body__h4 paywall">John Self</h4><p class="c-paragraph paywall">In a good year, <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/01/08/my-friends-by-hisham-matar-the-challenges-of-exile-and-humankinds-ability-to-adapt/" target="_blank">Hisham Matar’s My Friends</a> and <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/04/27/the-spoiled-heart-by-sunjeev-sahota-brave-exploration-of-class-and-race-from-multiple-angles/" target="_blank">Sunjeev Sahota’s The Spoiled Heart</a> were superb personal-political novels that should have won all the awards. <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/04/27/two-hours-by-alba-arikha-a-literary-masterpiece/" target="_blank">Alba Arikha’s Two Hours</a> is a brief and gripping story of a woman’s real and imagined lives. And if you like Damon Galgut’s clear-eyed, unsentimental stories of South Africa, try both <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/06/08/crooked-seeds-by-karen-jennings-a-taut-confrontation-with-the-horrors-of-the-past-that-resists-moralising/" target="_blank">Karen Jennings’s Crooked Seeds</a> and SJ Naudé's Fathers and Fugitives. They bowled me over. Outside novels, <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/03/09/barcelona-a-pleasing-variety-of-styles-and-perspectives-told-through-voices-young-and-old/" target="_blank">Mary Costello’s Barcelona</a> was my story collection of the year.</p><ul class="c-unordered-list paywall"><li class="c-list-item paywall"><i>John Self is a book reviewer. He lives in Belfast</i></li></ul><h4 class="b-it-article-body__h4 paywall">Edel Coffey</h4><p class="c-paragraph paywall">The one that really stands out for me is Ferdia Lennon’s charismatic debut, Glorious Exploits, a brilliant and original novel set in ancient Syracuse but told in a contemporary Dublin vernacular. Original, profound and funny. <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/07/13/all-the-colours-of-the-dark-by-chris-whitaker-a-thriller-romance-and-crime-novel-that-is-plenty-of-book-for-everyone/" target="_blank">Chris Whitaker’s All The Colours of the Dark</a> was a hugely enjoyable saga, part-love story, part-crime novel. <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/08/17/the-garden-against-time-in-search-of-a-common-paradise-review-gardens-excavated-as-agents-of-wider-world-change/" target="_blank">Olivia Laing’s The Garden against Time</a> was a brilliantly researched and deeply enjoyable examination of how we share the planet, and hybrid memoir. And an honourable mention must go to Miranda July’s All Fours, which was an eye-popping novel that fearlessly explored the painful process of ageing as a Gen X woman.</p><div id="arcad-feature-f0f6RPR7vA01bMt-3-5-6-7348da40ac7f1" class="default__StyledAdUnit-sc-1moicrg-0 gKEhzJ arcad-feature"><div class="arcad-container width_100" style="max-width:728px"><div id="arcad_f0f6RPR7vA01bMt-3-5-6-7348da40ac7f1" class="arcad ad-728x90"></div></div></div><ul class="c-unordered-list paywall"><li class="c-list-item paywall"><i>Edel Coffey’s latest novel is In Her Place</i></li></ul><h4 class="b-it-article-body__h4 paywall">Martin Doyle</h4><p class="c-paragraph paywall"><a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/01/27/glorious-exploits-by-ferdia-lennon-whacky-tale-of-theatrics-war-and-displacement-set-in-syracuse-bc/">Ferdia Lennon’s Glorious Exploits</a> is a marvellous feat of imagination, set in ancient Sicily, but with Barrytown accents. <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/09/21/intermezzo-by-sally-rooney-a-bold-adventurous-and-captivating-addition-to-an-impressive-body-of-work/">Intermezzo by Sally Roone</a>y is perceptive and precise, her best yet. <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/05/06/the-alternatives-by-caoilinn-hughes-a-superb-novel-about-sisters-doing-it-in-style/">The Alternatives by Caoilinn Hughes</a> sparkles with intelligence and wit. Niamh Mulvey’s The Amendments is a warm evocation of Irish women coming of age in a cold social climate. Kevin Barry’s The Heart in Winter is a joyous, riotous Irish western. Colin Barrett’s Wild Houses captures Ireland’s own wild west.</p><p class="c-paragraph paywall"><i>Martin Doyle is Books Editor of The Irish Times and author of Dirty Linen</i></p><h4 class="b-it-article-body__h4 paywall">Claire Hennessy</h4><p class="c-paragraph paywall">Margaret McDonald’s touching debut, Glasgow Boys, deftly explores male friendship in and out of the care system. <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/10/27/unflinching-examinations-of-contemporary-teenage-life-in-octobers-ya-picks/" target="_blank">Kathleen Glasgow’s The Glass Girl</a> skilfully and sympathetically tackles addiction and self-worth. <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/06/08/junes-ya-fiction-the-magical-realism-is-grounded-by-sharp-observations-about-teenage-social-dynamics/" target="_blank">Jenny Valentine’s Us in the Before and After</a> haunts in a variety of ways; <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/09/29/new-ya-titles-for-autumn-from-award-winning-writers-and-illustrators/" target="_blank">Jandy Nelson’s dreamy When the World Tips Over</a> is a spun-sugar treat. <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/03/17/march-ya-reads-love-in-a-time-of-famine/" target="_blank">Claire Furniss’s The Things We Leave Behind</a> and Moira Buffini’s Songlight remind us dystopian futures are always relevant.</p><p class="c-paragraph paywall"><i>Claire Hennessy is a writer and book critic</i></p><p class="c-paragraph b-it-article-body__interstitial-link"><span>[ </span><a aria-label="Open related story" class="c-link" href="https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/09/29/new-ya-titles-for-autumn-from-award-winning-writers-and-illustrators/" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">New YA titles for autumn from award-winning writers and illustrators<span class="visually-hidden">Opens in new window</span></a><span> ]</span></p><div class=" paywall"><figure class="c-media-item"><div style="aspect-ratio:800 / 533;background-color:var(--global-neutral-1)" class=""><img data-chromatic="ignore" alt="Moira Buffini. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw" class="c-image" loading="lazy" src="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/XBOTUE357FFKXD5ROER3BAIAHM.JPG?auth=8ad92c7b6915232bd80087f3e98d5d8fb4b7634d32854f5fce197084440346c1&width=800&height=533" srcSet="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/XBOTUE357FFKXD5ROER3BAIAHM.JPG?auth=8ad92c7b6915232bd80087f3e98d5d8fb4b7634d32854f5fce197084440346c1&width=400&height=266 400w, https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/XBOTUE357FFKXD5ROER3BAIAHM.JPG?auth=8ad92c7b6915232bd80087f3e98d5d8fb4b7634d32854f5fce197084440346c1&width=440&height=293 440w, https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/XBOTUE357FFKXD5ROER3BAIAHM.JPG?auth=8ad92c7b6915232bd80087f3e98d5d8fb4b7634d32854f5fce197084440346c1&width=800&height=533 800w, https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/XBOTUE357FFKXD5ROER3BAIAHM.JPG?auth=8ad92c7b6915232bd80087f3e98d5d8fb4b7634d32854f5fce197084440346c1&width=1024&height=682 1024w, https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/XBOTUE357FFKXD5ROER3BAIAHM.JPG?auth=8ad92c7b6915232bd80087f3e98d5d8fb4b7634d32854f5fce197084440346c1&width=1440&height=959 1440w" sizes="(max-width: 400px) 400px, (max-width: 440px) 440px, (max-width: 800px) 800px, (max-width: 1024px) 1024px, (min-width: 1025px) 1440px" width="800" height="533"/></div><figcaption class="c-media-item__fig-caption"><span class="c-media-item__caption">Moira Buffini. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw </span></figcaption></figure></div><h4 class="b-it-article-body__h4 paywall">Jan Carson</h4><p class="c-paragraph paywall">It’s always brilliant when the book you’ve been most looking forward lives up to all your expectations, and A Sunny Place for Shady People, Argentinian writer Mariana Enriquez’s second collection of short stories translated into English, expertly, by Megan McDowell, more than met my sky-high hopes. These stories are dark, macabre, occasionally absurd, sometimes funny and always, always, so deftly written they’ll literally haunt your dreams. I’m already counting the days down to Enriquez’s next publication.</p><ul class="c-unordered-list paywall"><li class="c-list-item paywall"><i>Jan Carson’s latest work is Quickly, While They Still Have Horses</i></li></ul><div class=" paywall"><figure class="c-media-item"><div style="aspect-ratio:800 / 533;background-color:var(--global-neutral-1)" class=""><img data-chromatic="ignore" alt="Ferdia Lennon. Photograph: Conor Horgan" class="c-image" loading="lazy" src="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/ZILD5YKGAVCFJMTBKDPHQCQTKI.jpg?auth=83d3c551fa14e784048dc395fd124ef4532276c01dbd1a27997947172a9fc3b3&width=800&height=533" srcSet="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/ZILD5YKGAVCFJMTBKDPHQCQTKI.jpg?auth=83d3c551fa14e784048dc395fd124ef4532276c01dbd1a27997947172a9fc3b3&width=400&height=266 400w, https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/ZILD5YKGAVCFJMTBKDPHQCQTKI.jpg?auth=83d3c551fa14e784048dc395fd124ef4532276c01dbd1a27997947172a9fc3b3&width=440&height=293 440w, https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/ZILD5YKGAVCFJMTBKDPHQCQTKI.jpg?auth=83d3c551fa14e784048dc395fd124ef4532276c01dbd1a27997947172a9fc3b3&width=800&height=533 800w, https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/ZILD5YKGAVCFJMTBKDPHQCQTKI.jpg?auth=83d3c551fa14e784048dc395fd124ef4532276c01dbd1a27997947172a9fc3b3&width=1024&height=682 1024w, https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/ZILD5YKGAVCFJMTBKDPHQCQTKI.jpg?auth=83d3c551fa14e784048dc395fd124ef4532276c01dbd1a27997947172a9fc3b3&width=1440&height=959 1440w" sizes="(max-width: 400px) 400px, (max-width: 440px) 440px, (max-width: 800px) 800px, (max-width: 1024px) 1024px, (min-width: 1025px) 1440px" width="800" height="533"/></div><figcaption class="c-media-item__fig-caption"><span class="c-media-item__caption">Ferdia Lennon. Photograph: Conor Horgan </span></figcaption></figure></div><h4 class="b-it-article-body__h4 paywall">Niamh Donnelly</h4><p class="c-paragraph paywall">With all the Sally Rooney discourse, it’s easy to forget how exquisite and immersive her writing is. Intermezzo, which follows two brothers after their father’s death, is her best, most sophisticated work yet. Tracing two interconnected lives, Christine Dwyer Hickey’s Our London Lives captures the London-Irish experience and the ache of missed opportunities. Maggie Armstrong’s voice leaps off the page in her debut story collection, Old Romantics, while Niamh Mulvey’s The Amendments is a wise and astute first novel.</p><div id="arcad-feature-f0fTB5060bBt6oG-3-5-7-1051eb5cab3823" class="default__StyledAdUnit-sc-1moicrg-0 gKEhzJ arcad-feature"><div class="arcad-container width_100" style="max-width:728px"><div id="arcad_f0fTB5060bBt6oG-3-5-7-1051eb5cab3823" class="arcad ad-728x90"></div></div></div><ul class="c-unordered-list paywall"><li class="c-list-item paywall"><i>Niamh Donnelly is a critic and arts journalist</i></li></ul><h4 class="b-it-article-body__h4 paywall">Tony Clayton-Lea</h4><p class="c-paragraph paywall">Belfast punk band Ruefrex is the subject of <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/02/03/wild-colonial-boys-is-hard-to-beat/" target="_blank">Wild Colonial Boys: A Belfast Punk Story</a> by Thomas Paul Burgess, a scathing memoir by the band’s former drummer and songwriter. <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/music/2024/06/26/blondie-guitarist-chris-stein-i-was-always-into-chaos-there-was-nothing-i-shied-away-from/" target="_blank">Under a Rock by Chris Stein</a> is the Blondie guitarist’s frank account of a life far less ordinary than most. The best dip-into book is You Spin Me Round, a collection of essays by mostly Irish writers that present warmth, wit and sometimes weird outlooks on the profound importance of music.</p><ul class="c-unordered-list paywall"><li class="c-list-item paywall"><i>Tony Clayton-Lea writes on pop culture and the arts</i></li></ul><h4 class="b-it-article-body__h4 paywall">Louise Kennedy</h4><p class="c-paragraph paywall">I have lately struggled to read fiction, perhaps because I am carrying my own novel-in-progress in my head. An exception is the marvellous <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/04/17/hagstone-by-sinead-gleeson-there-is-a-lyricism-to-this-magical-and-otherworldly-debut-novel/" target="_blank">Hagstone by Sinéad Gleeson</a>, a gorgeous, haunting, intelligent tale set on a remote island. In Hereafter, poet Vona Groarke constructs the story of her ancestor, who emigrated to New York to work in domestic service. It destroyed me. And please read Woman of Winter, her retelling of the Hag of Beara. Edward Said’s reissued The Question of Palestine, a vital, seminal work, has never been more relevant.</p><ul class="c-unordered-list paywall"><li class="c-list-item paywall"><i>Louise Kennedy’s latest book is Trespasses</i></li></ul><h4 class="b-it-article-body__h4 paywall">Michael Cronin</h4><p class="c-paragraph paywall">Phyllis Gaffney’s remarkable new book, Foreign Tongues: Victorian Language Learning and the Shaping of Modern Ireland, gives an account of the visionary women and men who laid the foundations for modern language learning in Ireland. This is a story that had never before been told. A scrupulously researched, compellingly written history of the institutional emergence of modern languages in Irish life, it fills a momentous gap in our knowledge of the languages that have shaped the fortunes of Irish society and culture in the 20th century and beyond.</p><ul class="c-unordered-list paywall"><li class="c-list-item paywall"><i>Michael Cronin is 1776 professor of French in Trinity College Dublin</i></li></ul></article><div class="c-stack b-author-bio" data-style-direction="vertical" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="unset" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><div class="c-stack b-author-bio__author" data-style-direction="horizontal" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="unset" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><img data-chromatic="ignore" alt="Martin Doyle" class="c-image" loading="lazy" src="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/https%3A%2F%2Fs3.amazonaws.com%2Farc-authors%2Firishtimes%2Ff59da41d-80df-4aaa-a086-a7a7458a5268.png?smart=true&auth=b0feb8badcc37df2dd380c0155433c0cafd4f231a961c72f78dbe3cf63947203&width=100&height=100" srcSet="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/https%3A%2F%2Fs3.amazonaws.com%2Farc-authors%2Firishtimes%2Ff59da41d-80df-4aaa-a086-a7a7458a5268.png?smart=true&auth=b0feb8badcc37df2dd380c0155433c0cafd4f231a961c72f78dbe3cf63947203&width=100&height=100 100w, https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/https%3A%2F%2Fs3.amazonaws.com%2Farc-authors%2Firishtimes%2Ff59da41d-80df-4aaa-a086-a7a7458a5268.png?smart=true&auth=b0feb8badcc37df2dd380c0155433c0cafd4f231a961c72f78dbe3cf63947203&width=200&height=200 200w, https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/https%3A%2F%2Fs3.amazonaws.com%2Farc-authors%2Firishtimes%2Ff59da41d-80df-4aaa-a086-a7a7458a5268.png?smart=true&auth=b0feb8badcc37df2dd380c0155433c0cafd4f231a961c72f78dbe3cf63947203&width=400&height=400 400w" width="100" height="100"/><div class="c-stack" data-style-direction="vertical" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="unset" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><a class="c-link b-author-bio__author-name-link" href="/author/martin-doyle/"><h2 class="c-heading b-author-bio__author-name">Martin Doyle</h2></a><p class="c-paragraph b-author-bio__author-description">Martin Doyle is Books Editor of The Irish Times</p><div class="c-stack b-author-bio__social-link-wrapper" data-style-direction="horizontal" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="unset" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="wrap"><a aria-label="Send an email to Martin Doyle" class="c-link b-author-bio__social-link" href="mailto:martindoyle@irishtimes.com" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank"><svg class="c-icon" width="48" height="48" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 512 512" fill="currentColor" aria-hidden="true" focusable="false"><path d="M502.3 190.8c3.9-3.1 9.7-.2 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type="application/javascript">window.Fusion=window.Fusion||{};Fusion.arcSite="irishtimes";Fusion.contextPath="/pf";Fusion.deployment="155";Fusion.globalContent={"_id":"KSHZHCUMIFEUVPKCII5M2Y4E3I","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":1202,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/1cea54c2-b8de-42aa-a360-f813d2247487/versions/1732617566/media/bab888ef0129f06f0704bb36bbcccf6d_compiled.mp3","clipboard":{},"has_published_copy":true},"address":{},"canonical_website":"irishtimes","comments":{"allow_comments":false,"display_comments":false,"moderation_required":false},"content_elements":[{"_id":"CR4DVYVNRVHNJL2YLE5WLCT2CU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732202057474,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"Anne Enright","level":4,"type":"header"},{"_id":"LJRO5ER3HFDC7P3SLN4EHLZ5U4","additional_properties":{"_id":1732534636946,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"Question 7 by Richard Flanagan is one of those books where a writer bundles up his entire life and hurls it on to the page. I also loved <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/10/11/stone-yard-devotional-by-charlotte-wood-bone-bare-prose-offers-the-space-to-dwell-in-questions/\" target=\"_blank\">Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood</a> and <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/10/12/the-safekeep-by-yael-van-der-wouden-beguiling-love-story-told-in-language-that-entertains-and-enthrals/\" target=\"_blank\">The Safekeep by Yael Van der Wouden</a>, which is brilliant on withheld rage and desire. I can join the groundswell of praise for another passionate and distinctive debut, Ferdia Lennon’s Glorious Exploits. The book I found most eye-opening was Code Dependent: Living in the Shadow of AI by Madhumita Murgia, which tells you everything you don’t want to know (but really should) about data tech.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ETBAMJCYMNFB5JRQNZ55UV7KIU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732202057474,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"items":[{"_id":"CR4DVYVNRVHNJL2YLE5WLCT2CU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732202057474,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"block_properties":{},"content":"<i>Anne Enright’s latest novel is The Wren, The Wren</i>","type":"text"}],"list_type":"unordered","type":"list"},{"_id":"KM442YBEPVHYXP5K2EA6NV4KD4","additional_properties":{"_id":1732616533917,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"John Boyne","level":4,"type":"header"},{"_id":"XPCQA6TMHZAY7MNDWWNO7EQIAE","additional_properties":{"_id":1732291795875,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"My book of the year is Small Rain by Garth Greenwell, one of the US’s finest novelists. He found himself doubled over in pain in a non-Covid-related incident during the pandemic, which led to a prolonged hospital stay. His affliction baffled doctors so much that he became a person of interest to medics of all disciplines. While they seek ways to treat him, Greenwell veers between stoicism, fear, missing his beloved partner, and worrying about his home. Rarely has illness made for such a compelling read.","type":"text","paywall":"paywall"},{"_id":"N6LPENERNVHHXOP2OKBVNCQ2AQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1732291795876,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"items":[{"_id":"U2WBZF4DXNEDZOR2QG5UNW2OCU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732291795876,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"block_properties":{},"content":"<i>John Boyne’s latest novel is Fire</i>","type":"text"}],"list_type":"unordered","type":"list"},{"_id":"RCMH334OY5GVPPUW6DY4TIIVMI","additional_properties":{"_id":1732202057494,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"Sarah Moss","level":4,"type":"header"},{"_id":"QUETJ52ETVBHVE63RTQP67C4IU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732534636985,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"End times bring out greatness in some writers. Kathleen Jamie published a new essay collection, <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/07/06/cairn-by-kathleen-jamie-poetic-meditation-on-climate-change-and-global-instability/\" target=\"_blank\">Cairn</a> (I feel this should be all one needs to say, but if you haven’t read her, do). The best writing about the domestic arts is always also writing about resistance to despair: I recommend Caroline Eden’s Cold Kitchen for culinary meditations from a war correspondent. <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/01/27/spent-light-by-lara-pawson-an-innovative-hybrid-of-fiction-and-autobiography/\" target=\"_blank\">Lara Pawson’s Spent Light</a>, disturbing and funny hybrid prose, has stayed with me since I read it last spring. I enjoyed the Shetland poet Jen Hadfield’s beautifully-crafted memoir, Storm Pegs.","type":"text","paywall":"paywall"},{"_id":"THZUUUHBFNDH3I2S2XUPCMLHE4","additional_properties":{"_id":1732534636986,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"items":[{"_id":"KY52Y2ON3FCJPGCSLNW4N7KYJE","additional_properties":{"_id":1732534636986,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"block_properties":{},"content":"<i>Sarah Moss’s latest book is My Good Bright Wolf: A Memoir</i>","type":"text"}],"list_type":"unordered","type":"list"},{"_id":"RGXSE5SYEFBJNJJK4Z7R7YMPKA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732202057457,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"Joseph O’Connor","level":4,"type":"header"},{"_id":"BGIXIQVUZFAY5CXYO4TPWUUKRI","additional_properties":{"_id":1732202057458,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/04/22/the-amendments-by-niamh-mulvey-what-it-means-to-be-female-through-different-generations/\" target=\"_blank\">Niamh Mulvey’s debut novel The Amendments</a> is a fine achievement from a writer of rare gifts. Every novel by Donal Ryan extends his deserved reputation; I adored his <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/08/20/heart-be-at-peace-by-donal-ryan-companion-novel-to-the-spinning-heart-returns-to-the-approach-that-won-him-such-acclaim/\" target=\"_blank\">Heart, Be at Peace</a>. I’ve loved John Cooper Clarke’s poems and performances since first encountering them as a teenager; his 2024 collection, What, is brilliant. My book of the year is Joe Boyd’s And the Roots of Rhythm Remain: a wonderfully knowledgeable and discursive travelogue of world music, detailed, loving, incisive and beautifully written. Jack Fennell’s anthology of lost Irish ghost stories, Your Own Dark Shadow, is a knockout.","type":"text","paywall":"paywall"},{"_id":"YTNEEDTTSJDJTB5PHG4WEDFAAM","additional_properties":{"_id":1732202057459,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"items":[{"_id":"MHT2G34SINBQ7E2CEXRPZX34VU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732202057459,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"block_properties":{},"content":"<i>Joseph O’Connor’s novel The Ghosts of Rome, a sequel to My Father’s House, is published in January</i>","type":"text"}],"list_type":"unordered","type":"list"},{"_id":"DJVNVDMV2FAP5MLOZ2CMPKFGBM","additional_properties":{"fullSizeResizeUrl":"/resizer/3ooSuAUOxNubB3g-LvXpvfOgqqU=/arc-photo-irishtimes/eu-central-1-prod/public/DJVNVDMV2FAP5MLOZ2CMPKFGBM.JPG","galleries":[],"ingestionMethod":"manual","iptc_job_identifier":"11E3DED3B265433C 80D40EB918331B5F","keywords":[""],"mime_type":"image/jpeg","originalName":"N24054104.JPG","originalUrl":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/DJVNVDMV2FAP5MLOZ2CMPKFGBM.JPG","owner":"nickbradshawvideo@gmail.com","proxyUrl":"/resizer/3ooSuAUOxNubB3g-LvXpvfOgqqU=/arc-photo-irishtimes/eu-central-1-prod/public/DJVNVDMV2FAP5MLOZ2CMPKFGBM.JPG","published":true,"resizeUrl":"/resizer/3ooSuAUOxNubB3g-LvXpvfOgqqU=/arc-photo-irishtimes/eu-central-1-prod/public/DJVNVDMV2FAP5MLOZ2CMPKFGBM.JPG","restricted":false,"takenOn":"2024-03-26T00:00:00Z","thumbnailResizeUrl":"/resizer/o60VMku_XRne-InsroKmHwabR_M=/300x0/arc-photo-irishtimes/eu-central-1-prod/public/DJVNVDMV2FAP5MLOZ2CMPKFGBM.JPG","version":0,"template_id":326,"_id":"WBB44XFISNDW7E3GVXGRM63SRY","comments":[]},"address":{},"auth":{"1":"df5dd7245adef31643de30c3e3ac45b5c3759763e512d53c6c26b3e57360ee29"},"caption":"Niamh Mulvey, author of The Amendments. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw","created_date":"2024-03-26T14:24:32Z","credits":{"affiliation":[{"name":"it_freelance","type":"author"}],"by":[{"byline":"Nick Bradshaw for The Irish Time","name":"Nick Bradshaw for The Irish Time","type":"author"}]},"distributor":{"mode":"reference","reference_id":"cdd0b063-728e-44f1-99c7-d746a19acd25"},"height":3935,"image_type":"photograph","last_updated_date":"2024-03-26T14:24:32Z","licensable":false,"owner":{"id":"irishtimes","sponsored":false},"slug":"N24054","source":{"name":"Irish Times Freelance","source_type":"freelance","additional_properties":{"editor":"photo center"},"edit_url":"","system":"photo center"},"subtitle":"","taxonomy":{"associated_tasks":[]},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/DJVNVDMV2FAP5MLOZ2CMPKFGBM.JPG","version":"0.10.9","width":5902,"vanity_credits":{"affiliation":[],"by":[]}},{"_id":"D7GQLQDP3NHL3LMO3XLAGZYIYE","additional_properties":{"_id":1732202057460,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"Mark O’Connell","level":4,"type":"header"},{"_id":"UIJXEBY7ARFMFNU7BVEHZR45YI","additional_properties":{"_id":1732290876324,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"Hari Kunzru is, I think, a weirdly underrated writer. It’s not that he’s ignored – far from it, he’s very successful, and has been for many years now. But I think the extent to which his fiction plumbs the depths of our terminal-stage capitalist malaise, while also being compulsively entertaining, deserves to have a lot more fuss made of it. Blue Ruin is the third in his “Three Colours” trilogy, following White Tears and the incredible Red Pill. It has a thrillerish pace, and a cold-blooded intellectualism reminiscent of mid-period Don DeLillo.","type":"text","paywall":"paywall"},{"_id":"PSLIETHHJNGFDN2ZR5YIF32XJI","additional_properties":{"_id":1732202057460,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"items":[{"_id":"D7GQLQDP3NHL3LMO3XLAGZYIYE","additional_properties":{"_id":1732202057460,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"block_properties":{},"content":"<i>Mark O’Connell’s latest book is A Thread of Violence</i>","type":"text"}],"list_type":"unordered","type":"list"},{"_id":"H2TTGKUBYVFYVLEJH5XWQ4X2NA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732202057492,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"Kit de Waal","level":4,"type":"header"},{"_id":"RGU2BDNOMJGGPEJCOF5JUE2Q54","additional_properties":{"_id":1732202057493,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"My book of the year is Donal Ryan’s Heart, Be at Peace. Ryan has a way of getting a whole character and a whole life down on a few pages, sometimes a few paragraphs. In overlapping and intertwined voices, we’re picking up where his previous masterpiece The Spinning Heart left off. Is it possible to say a work of fiction is true? Well, this is and once again, it’s a book that stays with you well beyond the last page.","type":"text","paywall":"paywall"},{"_id":"BNTBAGR2TJC5JDKINQIC3DEKKA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732534636983,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"items":[{"_id":"LF3EUFOZEVFE7IB6UGGRWARHOE","additional_properties":{"_id":1732534636983,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"block_properties":{},"content":"<i>Kit de Waal’s new novel, The Best if Everything, is out next April</i>","type":"text"}],"list_type":"unordered","type":"list"},{"_id":"MF5NZ4W27VDUFNHRSRQSJPSJPY","additional_properties":{"_id":1732202057461,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"Diarmaid Ferriter","level":4,"type":"header"},{"_id":"I5BGLYZ4JFB3TJN6LFJTYV3KRI","additional_properties":{"_id":1732534636912,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/08/20/heart-be-at-peace-by-donal-ryan-companion-novel-to-the-spinning-heart-returns-to-the-approach-that-won-him-such-acclaim/\" target=\"_blank\">Donal Ryan’s Heart, Be at Peace</a> is enthralling. He captures such a range of emotion, defiance, eloquence, crudity and dark humour, in brilliant prose that makes him stand out in a crowded and rich Irish literary space. <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/02/24/remembering-peasants-fascinating-study-makes-for-essential-reading-about-our-shared-past/\" target=\"_blank\">Patrick Joyce’s Remembering Peasants: A Personal History of a Vanishing World</a> gives agency to the people of the land as he excavates the peasant experiences across Europe, placing the Irish dimension and his personal connection to it in a broader context. Given the dark politics of this year, <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/05/11/a-great-disorder-by-richard-slotkin-ambitious-mapping-of-americas-past-to-its-present-via-myth/\" target=\"_blank\">Richard Slotkin’s A Great Disorder</a> is a timely and textured reminder of the exploitation of national myths and how and why the US is so divided.","type":"text","paywall":"paywall"},{"_id":"5X75O7M4AZASHPB2B4ZSOSPT6A","additional_properties":{"_id":1732534636913,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"items":[{"_id":"BVJKLQT5G5B3HKYQLK2B7TIIGU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732534636913,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"block_properties":{},"content":"<i>Diarmaid Ferriter’s latest book is The Revelation of Ireland 1995-2020</i>","type":"text"}],"list_type":"unordered","type":"list"},{"_id":"BX6POJ477VMRTGR4VNCX4HKPZI","additional_properties":{"fullSizeResizeUrl":"/resizer/_pyyidmz5EBUZt7_51PLh5C9Y-8=/arc-photo-irishtimes/eu-central-1-prod/public/BX6POJ477VMRTGR4VNCX4HKPZI.jpg","galleries":[],"keywords":["MAM","alan-betson"],"mime_type":"image/jpeg","originalName":"3209491.jpg","originalUrl":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/BX6POJ477VMRTGR4VNCX4HKPZI.jpg","proxyUrl":"/resizer/_pyyidmz5EBUZt7_51PLh5C9Y-8=/arc-photo-irishtimes/eu-central-1-prod/public/BX6POJ477VMRTGR4VNCX4HKPZI.jpg","published":true,"resizeUrl":"/resizer/_pyyidmz5EBUZt7_51PLh5C9Y-8=/arc-photo-irishtimes/eu-central-1-prod/public/BX6POJ477VMRTGR4VNCX4HKPZI.jpg","restricted":false,"takenOn":"2017-10-27T00:00:00Z","thumbnailResizeUrl":"/resizer/7gGze920_wS4td5yN7nWMjQVItw=/300x0/arc-photo-irishtimes/eu-central-1-prod/public/BX6POJ477VMRTGR4VNCX4HKPZI.jpg","version":0,"_id":"4C4IU2TESBE6DDJKMFIGZ2ACPI","comments":[]},"address":{"region":"XXXXXXXXXX"},"auth":{"1":"85f3abaf228c81b99687ad69df80137b2b1be2cc81d52b6eb61d7fe95cc3ea49"},"caption":"Alan Hollinghurst. Photograph: Alan Betson","copyright":"3209491","created_date":"2022-01-18T22:54:51Z","credits":{"by":[{"name":"Alan Betson","type":"author"}]},"distributor":{"category":"other","mode":"custom","name":"Irish Times MAM"},"height":3280,"last_updated_date":"2022-01-18T22:54:51Z","licensable":false,"owner":{"id":"irishtimes"},"slug":"alan020","source":{"name":"Irish Times MAM","source_id":"3209491","source_type":"other","additional_properties":{"editor":"photo center"},"system":"Irish Times MAM"},"subtitle":"","type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/BX6POJ477VMRTGR4VNCX4HKPZI.jpg","version":"0.10.9","width":4928,"planning":{"internal_note":"For MAM images, the DATE CAPTURED field refers to the first time the image was used in newspaper; it is not the date the photo was taken"},"vanity_credits":{"by":[]}},{"_id":"PRNC2BNEEBA6VL3IHTUFTYZN2A","additional_properties":{"_id":1732202057473,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"Julia Kelly","level":4,"type":"header"},{"_id":"NKOFN2AZUJGU5KLZURVTK4WE6Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1732534636943,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst is my book of the year. Reading his prose is like sinking into a bath of the perfect temperature, with his exquisite use of language and extraordinary powers of description. I also loved <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/06/15/all-fours-by-miranda-july-one-womans-quest-for-life-after-midlife/\" target=\"_blank\">All Fours by Miranda July</a>, a wild, bawdy, horny, hilarious escape from the reality of a menopausal wife and mother into an alternative fantasy, an existence where she can express her sexual and artistic desires with unfettered freedom.","type":"text","paywall":"paywall"},{"_id":"SETR3PLUMJEO7GYU3725ZSRR3M","additional_properties":{"_id":1732534636944,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"items":[{"_id":"KA5RXWHIVJFBBORUYFJSEESIUU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732534636944,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"block_properties":{},"content":"<i>Julia Kelly’s fourth book, Still, will be published next September</i>","type":"text"}],"list_type":"unordered","type":"list"},{"_id":"RPYWVC7J6BGAPDJSRV3DYEBY2I","additional_properties":{"_id":1732202057463,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"Malachy Clerkin","level":4,"type":"header"},{"_id":"HMIESUPZ3JCWFPD2QC72LDQ4WM","additional_properties":{"_id":1732203179865,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/06/22/the-racket-by-conor-niland-lonely-tennis-locker-room-conveyed-with-deft-touch/\" target=\"_blank\">The Racket by Conor Niland and Gavin Cooney</a> is a fantastic – and deservedly prize-winning – trek through the nearly-but-not-quite backroads of professional tennis. <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/10/12/obsessed-the-autobiography-by-johnny-sexton-one-of-the-best-irish-sports-books-ever-written/\" target=\"_blank\">Obsessed by Johnny Sexton and Peter O’Reilly</a> is a laudably searching examination of the psyche of one of Ireland’s greatest ever sportspeople. <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/11/09/states-of-play-how-sportswashing-took-over-football-by-miguel-delaney-admirably-thorough-depressingly-persuasive/\" target=\"_blank\">States of Play by Miguel Delaney</a> paints a detailed and often grotesque picture of how soccer has found itself hijacked by money and sportswashing. Finally, My Story by Joe Canning and Vincent Hogan is full of searing insights into the Galway hurler’s life less ordinary.","type":"text","paywall":"paywall"},{"_id":"IGSIK5AHMVAXBCEBPYQPAQUKPY","additional_properties":{"_id":1732202057463,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"items":[{"_id":"RPYWVC7J6BGAPDJSRV3DYEBY2I","additional_properties":{"_id":1732202057463,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"block_properties":{},"content":"<i>Malachy Clerkin is an Irish Times sports reporter</i>","type":"text"}],"list_type":"unordered","type":"list"},{"_id":"53JPF47GYDRYBSJVCXSZYNZGNI","additional_properties":{"fullSizeResizeUrl":"/resizer/-ednA16vYT-djFV-W3pWr7h-C8Y=/arc-photo-irishtimes/eu-central-1-prod/public/53JPF47GYDRYBSJVCXSZYNZGNI.jpg","galleries":[],"iptc_job_identifier":"14150078ae","iptc_source":"Shutterstock","keywords":["131389841","14","2023","between","cup","denis","during","final","france","ireland","ireland's","johnny","match","new","oct","october","quarter","reacts","rugby","saint","saintdenis","sexton","sport","vs","world","zealand"],"mime_type":"image/jpeg","originalName":"14150078ae","originalUrl":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/53JPF47GYDRYBSJVCXSZYNZGNI.jpg","proxyUrl":"/resizer/-ednA16vYT-djFV-W3pWr7h-C8Y=/arc-photo-irishtimes/eu-central-1-prod/public/53JPF47GYDRYBSJVCXSZYNZGNI.jpg","published":true,"resizeUrl":"/resizer/-ednA16vYT-djFV-W3pWr7h-C8Y=/arc-photo-irishtimes/eu-central-1-prod/public/53JPF47GYDRYBSJVCXSZYNZGNI.jpg","restricted":false,"takenOn":"2023-10-14T00:00:00Z","thumbnailResizeUrl":"/resizer/Syjl5DkFYekt8ftEqSkL9_ZR6tQ=/300x0/arc-photo-irishtimes/eu-central-1-prod/public/53JPF47GYDRYBSJVCXSZYNZGNI.jpg","version":2,"_id":"KDGUYTH2DFFUVMWZ26B4JSRBBE","comments":[]},"address":{},"auth":{"1":"c5c26170e15ae9170cbfa68dd19deffffec6d3ba593906267dab580f46ffc32e"},"caption":"Obsessed by Johnny Sexton, above, and Peter O’Reilly is a laudably searching examination of the psyche of one of Ireland’s greatest ever sportspeople. Photograph: Yoan Valat/EPA","copyright":"Copyright (c) 2023 Shutterstock. No use without permission.","created_date":"2023-10-14T19:37:45Z","credits":{"affiliation":[{"name":"EPA-EFE","type":"author"}],"by":[{"name":"Yoan Valat","type":"author"}]},"distributor":{"mode":"reference","reference_id":"f95e656d-813d-4f4d-ab39-4a2eca175ebf"},"height":2420,"last_updated_date":"2023-10-28T19:37:46Z","licensable":false,"owner":{"id":"irishtimes"},"slug":"rugby-world-cup-2023-quarter-final-ireland-vs-new-zealand-saint-denis-france-14-oct-2023","source":{"name":"EPA - European Pressphoto Agency","source_id":"14150078ae","source_type":"wires","additional_properties":{"editor":"photo center"},"edit_url":"","system":"arc i/o"},"subtitle":"","taxonomy":{"associated_tasks":[]},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/53JPF47GYDRYBSJVCXSZYNZGNI.jpg","version":"0.10.9","width":3500,"vanity_credits":{"affiliation":[],"by":[]}},{"_id":"QYNDR4HOUJHHXDIGO4F454JUKA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732202057464,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"Fintan O’Toole","level":4,"type":"header"},{"_id":"JXJ623FWUJGX5MFTLRCSM5TXZU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732202057456,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"In a year stained by such widespread indifference to extreme violence against civilians in war, Cormac Ó Gráda’s The Hidden Victims: Civilian Casualties of the Two World Wars stood out as a work of great moral as well as of historical importance. One of Ireland’s greatest historians scrupulously sifts the evidence from the first and second World Wars and their “collateral damage” of genocide, famine, aerial bombing and disease. His conclusion is startling: he estimates that the wars cost not the previously accepted 35 million but 65 million civilian lives – nearly two-thirds of the 100 million total killed. Ó Gráda writes with immense care, eschewing rhetoric or appeals to the emotions, but there is always the sense that this quiet precision is an act of mourning for 30 million people who were not even given the dignity of becoming statistics. The resonances for the present are profound: this book is a potent warning against amnesia and evasion.","type":"text","paywall":"paywall"},{"_id":"7WKFI6LDSFAMTOMEDYX3JB76DQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1732534636904,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"items":[{"_id":"XZ2LRYJZOZAABMFKVGC2ZY6Q7U","additional_properties":{"_id":1732534636904,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"block_properties":{},"content":"<i>Fintan O’Toole’s latest book is Shakespeare Is Hard, But so Is Life</i>","type":"text"}],"list_type":"unordered","type":"list"},{"_id":"4ENYIXOQ2FDS3MK3SU7FQKJMPE","additional_properties":{"_id":1732202057471,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"Sarah Gilmartin","level":4,"type":"header"},{"_id":"WRIM5Y5VKRDEJDYLT4RNTUP7RA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732290876345,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/02/20/the-lodgers-by-holly-pester-a-smart-superbly-crafted-story-on-the-state-of-a-nation/\" target=\"_blank\">Holly Pester’s debut The Lodgers</a> is a bracing, eloquent dissection of a generation priced out of their own home. <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/10/10/our-evenings-by-alan-hollinghurst-review-beautifully-observed-tracking-of-an-actor-into-old-age/\" target=\"_blank\">Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst</a> examines race, class, sexuality and identity in a narrative suffused with loss and longing. Three gems from the Booker longlist: <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/01/27/wild-houses-by-colin-barrett-superbly-observed-world-framed-by-crime-caper-plot/\" target=\"_blank\">Wild Houses by Colin Barrett</a>, Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel, <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/09/07/creation-lake-by-rachel-kushner-fun-devastating-and-far-more-urgent-than-a-typical-spy-thriller/\" target=\"_blank\">Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner</a>. Three intricate, and very different, story collections: Barcelona by Mary Costello, <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/04/25/old-romantics-by-maggie-armstrong-an-audacious-debut-collection-with-a-personality-all-its-own/\" target=\"_blank\">Old Romantics by Maggie Armstrong</a>, <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/05/07/openings-by-lucy-caldwell-enlightening-and-enriching-collection-of-stories-that-closes-a-loose-triptych/\" target=\"_blank\">Openings by Lucy Caldwell</a>. And for poetry fans, the moving <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/05/05/new-poetry-raptures-road-and-then-the-hare-landscape-of-the-body-all-the-good-things-you-deserve/\" target=\"_blank\">All the Good Things You Deserve by Elaine Feeney</a>.","type":"text","paywall":"paywall"},{"_id":"ECEMYKCXE5FG5FLKENTU4VB7HE","additional_properties":{"_id":1732290876346,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"items":[{"_id":"PSI3OZI44JDNBJF3UYC6LWFQNA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732290876346,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"block_properties":{},"content":"<i>Sarah Gilmartin’s latest novel is Service</i>","type":"text"}],"list_type":"unordered","type":"list"},{"_id":"ZGTC3TC4KFBBXOJXMU75AATV7A","additional_properties":{"_id":1732202057465,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"Brian Hanley","level":4,"type":"header"},{"_id":"MJOHBBIJRVB77M255NDO7DOLL4","additional_properties":{"_id":1732272055245,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"It has been a depressing year, which perhaps influences these choices. Some impressive new histories illuminated the 20th century’s myriad tragedies; betrayed revolutionary hopes in <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/09/21/hotel-lux-by-maurice-casey-radical-politics-and-queer-love-in-the-dark-shadow-of-stalinism/\" target=\"_blank\">Maurice Casey’s Hotel Lux</a>, murder gangs and state collusion in <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/09/28/ghosts-of-a-family-review-superlative-account-of-atrocity-of-the-mcmahon-murders/\" target=\"_blank\">Edward Burke’s Ghosts of A Family</a>, despotic political “saviours” in <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/09/28/the-party-is-always-right-the-untold-story-of-gerry-healy-and-british-trotskyism-a-shocking-history-well-told/\" target=\"_blank\">Aidan Beatty’s The Party Is Always Right</a>. The fictionalised corruption brought to life in <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/02/25/best-new-crime-fiction-joe-thomass-red-menace-is-an-early-candidate-for-crime-novel-of-the-year/\" target=\"_blank\">Joe Thomas’s Red Menace</a>, his follow-up to the excellent White Riot, seems almost benign in comparison.","type":"text","paywall":"paywall"},{"_id":"GQD2FQDI6JA7PDY6VMYP4PBXY4","additional_properties":{"_id":1732272055246,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"items":[{"_id":"QX7NVGKYKBDGNE27OLNXNU6TTA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732272055246,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"block_properties":{},"content":"<i>Brian Hanley is assistant professor of history at Trinity College Dublin</i>","type":"text"}],"list_type":"unordered","type":"list"},{"_id":"MOPCPUID2ZGGFOAY432NV7XGM4","additional_properties":{"_id":1732202057475,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"Sally Hayden","level":4,"type":"header"},{"_id":"YR63Q3JNTRE7JP2KYDP3XCG3KU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732202057476,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"I read mostly older books this year, but a few new ones that I definitely recommend are Scattered by Aamna Mohdin, a Somali-British journalist whose 2015 reporting trip to Calais prompts exploration as to the journey her own family undertook to escape Somalia: The Tale of a Wall, a memoir by Nasser Abu Srour, a Palestinian who has spent decades in Israeli prison; and Chukwuebuka Ibeh’s Blessings, a moving novel about queer lives in Nigeria.","type":"text","paywall":"paywall"},{"_id":"LZLGD6KTJ5EDDMJEG3X4KO3BPM","additional_properties":{"_id":1732202057475,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"items":[{"_id":"MOPCPUID2ZGGFOAY432NV7XGM4","additional_properties":{"_id":1732202057475,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"block_properties":{},"content":"<i>Sally Hayden is the author of My Fourth Time, We Drowned, and writes from the Middle East and Africa for The Irish Times</i>","type":"text"}],"list_type":"unordered","type":"list"},{"_id":"NKJE4PYS3JH5TGDBBCEJSQ75LE","additional_properties":{"_id":1732202057466,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"Donal Fallon","level":4,"type":"header"},{"_id":"336EBPHZPJC2HMRIRAW34DMGFU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732534636924,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"The Irish in the Resistance by Clodagh Finn and John Morgan is a brilliant achievement, bringing to light new stories of men and women who risked everything during the second World War. While Samuel Beckett’s role in the French Resistance is well documented (it was considerably more than what he dismissed as “boy scout stuff”), many of the names in this book will be entirely new to the reader. Great archival digging and lots of heart.","type":"text","paywall":"paywall"},{"_id":"YHCQGFYEFBEVLB2X3PZEBGM25Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1732534636925,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"items":[{"_id":"CCHW6VF3AVDOBJRPW7RYAXPPUU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732534636925,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"block_properties":{},"content":"<i>Donal Fallon is the presenter of the Three Castles Burning podcast</i>","type":"text"}],"list_type":"unordered","type":"list"},{"_id":"JEGNMYAMXJGXBCOBYF3TQCVNOI","additional_properties":{"_id":1732202057478,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"Sara Keating","level":4,"type":"header"},{"_id":"LFXXOH62DZFJBMJDQ6W3B5ZNJY","additional_properties":{"_id":1732202057479,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"It’s impossible to choose, but as the shortest day of the year approaches, I am reminded of two of the best children’s books of 2024: the fantastic non-fiction <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/06/08/childrens-reads-from-superbly-conceived-non-fiction-to-a-fitting-capstone-for-a-wonderful-career/\" target=\"_blank\">Solstice: The Longest, Shortest Day</a> by Jen Breach (5+) and <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/10/09/childrens-fiction-ghost-stories-for-samhain-and-tales-of-female-fearlessness/\" target=\"_blank\">Eilish Fisher’s stunning Fia and the Last Snow Deer</a>, featuring writing and illustrations of equal beauty. For a greater understanding of how we know what we know, Chris Haughton’s The History of Information (7+) is both eye-catching and essential. Finally, Vicky Cowie’s Tales from Muggleswick Wood (3+) is a bedtime treasury narrated by a grandmother with whimsical watercolours from Charlie Macksey, which will be beloved on bookshelves for generations.","type":"text","paywall":"paywall"},{"_id":"FSC64NWOLFFI3NYE5YW3DJ52SU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732202057480,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"items":[{"_id":"KF4VFCJJGBEFFDYUZOLMZWCLP4","additional_properties":{"_id":1732202057480,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"block_properties":{},"content":"<i>Sara Keating is a cultural journalist, with a special interest in children’s books</i>","type":"text"}],"list_type":"unordered","type":"list"},{"_id":"WV7EXDOY4NHFBBVWDGOKQTWTQU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732202057467,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"Paul Muldoon","level":4,"type":"header"},{"_id":"LWEJ5CG5V5FRDBGXPVFEQKCVCY","additional_properties":{"_id":1732203179872,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/01/27/missing-persons-or-my-grandmothers-secrets-by-clair-wills-family-fables-hidden-truths/\" target=\"_blank\">Missing Persons, or My Grandmother’s Secrets, by Clair Wills</a>, is a book that will secure a place in the annals of 20th-century Irish social history as firmly as Twenty Years A-Growing by Maurice O’Sullivan or Heinrich Böll’s Irish Journal. This account of a cover-up within a single family resonates with a capacity to look away that too often seems to be a national characteristic. One consequence of this book might be to further tip the scales and allow us to overcome our reluctance to send the Catholic Church packing, as we would any other multinational with a comparable history of dodgy behaviour.","type":"text","paywall":"paywall"},{"_id":"AX4YILUUNVBHRG4ENXXEZWT7O4","additional_properties":{"_id":1732534636928,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"items":[{"_id":"WSTDSEDS2JFTHIOGUZAGUYAKDE","additional_properties":{"_id":1732534636928,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"block_properties":{},"content":"<i>Paul Muldoon’s latest work is Joy in Service on Rue Tagore</i>","type":"text"}],"list_type":"unordered","type":"list"},{"_id":"6ITUWKIUWVFZPKEL7OLAN3HLH4","additional_properties":{"_id":1732615867570,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"Claire Adam","level":4,"type":"header"},{"_id":"DSMNJVRHCZEGPHRRFWUCTTHHU4","additional_properties":{"_id":1732290876361,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"My Dear Kabul by an Afghan women’s writing group is an absolute gem of a memoir that deserves a place on your bookshelf and in your heart. The authors are 21 Afghan women writing secretly to each other in real time, often in WhatsApp messages, as they live through the country’s fall to the Taliban in 2021. The very act of writing is dangerous, but they’re driven by an urgent need to connect – with each other and the outside world – even as the walls close in on them.","type":"text","paywall":"paywall"},{"_id":"P33RPU2EBJA2VDOCZROVAT6L64","additional_properties":{"_id":1732290876362,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"items":[{"_id":"DMREPLC4WJFE7IY253QWPRBIJQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1732290876362,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"block_properties":{},"content":"<i>Claire Adam is the author of Golden Child. Her next novel, Love Forms, will be published next June</i>","type":"text"}],"list_type":"unordered","type":"list"},{"_id":"TWA4XXOEBVFYFIZETNHYG54W6M","additional_properties":{"_id":1732202057468,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"Paul Howard","level":4,"type":"header"},{"_id":"IKK3JNJHUFBYZFZVRT3UVMHS4I","additional_properties":{"_id":1732290876339,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/09/07/our-london-lives-a-masterful-work-full-of-skilful-nuance-and-profound-truth/\" target=\"_blank\">Our London Lives by Christine Dwyer Hickey</a> is a masterpiece. It’s the story of two teenage Irish emigrants living in London in 1979. Milly in a runaway from judgmental, Catholic Ireland. Pip is a young boxing hopeful with a taste for the sauce. The novel tells the story of their fleeting romance and then the stories of their occasionally interweaving lives over the course of the four decades that follow. It’s dark and heartbreaking. Beautiful storytelling by a master of the genre.","type":"text","paywall":"paywall"},{"_id":"RTGYEVD6ABEEHK4VBAVO3ILFJE","additional_properties":{"_id":1732534636931,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"<i>Paul Howard’s latest book is the </i><a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/author/ross-ocarroll-kelly/\" target=\"_blank\"><i>Ross O’Carroll-Kelly</i></a><i> novel Don’t Look Back in Ongar</i>","type":"text","paywall":"paywall"},{"_id":"JOWLOHQBDJGTPCO4O2YGJOBA4E","additional_properties":{"_id":1732202057486,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"Éilís Ní Dhuibhne","level":4,"type":"header"},{"_id":"55RDFISEGJAHZGHURZ4TYTSOJY","additional_properties":{"_id":1732287543257,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/2024/04/06/quickly-while-they-still-have-horses-review-jan-carson-delivers-a-compelling-collection/\" target=\"_blank\">Jan Carson, Quickly, While They Still Have Horses</a>, is an outstanding collection of witty short stories set in – and satirising – the North of Ireland. I loved Percival Everett’s James, and also Sarah Moss’s memoir focusing on anorexia, <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/08/24/my-good-bright-wolf-by-sarah-moss-a-bleak-often-brilliant-personal-history/\" target=\"_blank\">My Good Bright Wolf</a>. My great friends Liz McManus, Mary Rose Callaghan, Phyl Herbert, Catherine Dunne, Celia de Freine, Evelyn Conlon and Mícheál Ó Conghaile all published wonderful books during the year. They are a productive bunch!","type":"text","paywall":"paywall"},{"_id":"YIJL7EMMF5BM5BGVUCQB2IYWME","additional_properties":{"_id":1732287543258,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"items":[{"_id":"DAPPEVNLZFH35L6VJVIC6FOC7I","additional_properties":{"_id":1732287543258,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"block_properties":{},"content":"<i>Éilís Ní Dhuibhne’s latest book, edited with Michaela Schage Frueh, is Well! You Don’t Look It: Women Writers in Ireland Reflect on Ageing</i>","type":"text"}],"list_type":"unordered","type":"list"},{"_id":"CTXLZYDWHBE7LAA7ETU2LNC3WE","additional_properties":{"_id":1732202057469,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"Paul Murray","level":4,"type":"header"},{"_id":"XIORDFQJDVHGVO7WU442ZCFLUU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732527560805,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/11/02/gliff-by-ali-smith-part-allegory-part-dystopian-fiction-altogether-thrilling/\" target=\"_blank\">Ali Smith’s miraculous Gliff</a> is at once a pitch-black take on the authoritarian future and a tender, hilarious and ultimately uplifting portrait of two young sisters as they battle to escape it. Full of jokes and wordplay, kindness and connection – the eponymous Gliff is a horse the girls rescue from an abattoir – it’s part novel, part resistance manual, facing into the darkness while showing a path to redemption. A ray of hope after a year like this one.","type":"text","paywall":"paywall"},{"_id":"LIEKZO2NCBBY7BGR6QWRDGLHZY","additional_properties":{"_id":1732527560806,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"items":[{"_id":"XSP3GPSQSJDKDGQODK64M6UUEU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732527560806,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"block_properties":{},"content":"<i>Paul Murray’s latest novel is The Bee Sting</i>","type":"text"}],"list_type":"unordered","type":"list"},{"_id":"VIBF3KVIOFE7ZIEL2BKIZV54PM","additional_properties":{"_id":1732202057477,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"Mia Levitin","level":4,"type":"header"},{"_id":"YNJMVBID7BHEVP67TBUQFPUIMY","additional_properties":{"_id":1732295221284,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/10/12/the-safekeep-by-yael-van-der-wouden-beguiling-love-story-told-in-language-that-entertains-and-enthrals/\" target=\"_blank\">Yael van der Wouden’s The Safekeep</a>, sexy and twisty without sacrificing substance, is a marvel. Alan Hollinghurst’s Our Evenings made me weep buckets of tears, and I was in the chorus of accolades for <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/04/19/james-by-percival-everett-reimagining-huck-finn/\" target=\"_blank\">Percival Everett’s National Book Award-winning James</a>. Hattie Crisell’s In Writing is chock-full of insights about not only writing but life. And more than just a survey, <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/09/09/the-haunted-wood-a-history-of-childhood-reading-by-sam-leith-monumental-and-invigorating/\" target=\"_blank\">Sam Leith’s The Haunted Wood</a> is a tribute to the enduring importance of children’s literature.","type":"text","paywall":"paywall"},{"_id":"JJKMOXDAX5FQHECWWJUZ63B57Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1732534636953,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"items":[{"_id":"UMFQ5QRZYNEMTF6STMNC2E63TA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732534636953,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"block_properties":{},"content":"<i>Mia Levitin is a critic and author of The Future of Seduction</i>","type":"text"}],"list_type":"unordered","type":"list"},{"_id":"JTZRZ6DWXZB3VABTF73EIBTYBU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732202057450,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"John Self","level":4,"type":"header"},{"_id":"3YM4YMUI4NDXDGWP4CSZBJX7PU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732202057451,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"In a good year, <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/01/08/my-friends-by-hisham-matar-the-challenges-of-exile-and-humankinds-ability-to-adapt/\" target=\"_blank\">Hisham Matar’s My Friends</a> and <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/04/27/the-spoiled-heart-by-sunjeev-sahota-brave-exploration-of-class-and-race-from-multiple-angles/\" target=\"_blank\">Sunjeev Sahota’s The Spoiled Heart</a> were superb personal-political novels that should have won all the awards. <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/04/27/two-hours-by-alba-arikha-a-literary-masterpiece/\" target=\"_blank\">Alba Arikha’s Two Hours</a> is a brief and gripping story of a woman’s real and imagined lives. And if you like Damon Galgut’s clear-eyed, unsentimental stories of South Africa, try both <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/06/08/crooked-seeds-by-karen-jennings-a-taut-confrontation-with-the-horrors-of-the-past-that-resists-moralising/\" target=\"_blank\">Karen Jennings’s Crooked Seeds</a> and SJ Naudé's Fathers and Fugitives. They bowled me over. Outside novels, <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/03/09/barcelona-a-pleasing-variety-of-styles-and-perspectives-told-through-voices-young-and-old/\" target=\"_blank\">Mary Costello’s Barcelona</a> was my story collection of the year.","type":"text","paywall":"paywall"},{"_id":"R5TDYLY2AVCTTJ3LX3AJZ55JX4","additional_properties":{"_id":1732550422272,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"items":[{"_id":"RIVOS2K34VG4NHZKELPBTSAGQU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732550422272,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"block_properties":{},"content":"<i>John Self is a book reviewer. He lives in Belfast</i>","type":"text"}],"list_type":"unordered","type":"list"},{"_id":"GBLSNPK7BFCVLAJQ7B2HSVLBYQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1732202057489,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"Edel Coffey","level":4,"type":"header"},{"_id":"MZR7NEGITZFNZASRZPF52NREKA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732534636973,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"The one that really stands out for me is Ferdia Lennon’s charismatic debut, Glorious Exploits, a brilliant and original novel set in ancient Syracuse but told in a contemporary Dublin vernacular. Original, profound and funny. <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/07/13/all-the-colours-of-the-dark-by-chris-whitaker-a-thriller-romance-and-crime-novel-that-is-plenty-of-book-for-everyone/\" target=\"_blank\">Chris Whitaker’s All The Colours of the Dark</a> was a hugely enjoyable saga, part-love story, part-crime novel. <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/08/17/the-garden-against-time-in-search-of-a-common-paradise-review-gardens-excavated-as-agents-of-wider-world-change/\" target=\"_blank\">Olivia Laing’s The Garden against Time</a> was a brilliantly researched and deeply enjoyable examination of how we share the planet, and hybrid memoir. And an honourable mention must go to Miranda July’s All Fours, which was an eye-popping novel that fearlessly explored the painful process of ageing as a Gen X woman.","type":"text","paywall":"paywall"},{"_id":"R33TRAWCKJCVZOSPILY7VXNUTQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1732534636974,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"items":[{"_id":"ZB25ZTOHLVG65DOIXC7NICBL34","additional_properties":{"_id":1732534636974,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"block_properties":{},"content":"<i>Edel Coffey’s latest novel is In Her Place</i>","type":"text"}],"list_type":"unordered","type":"list"},{"_id":"XKIVC34JRZFQPCNBR3V5WKRNCY","additional_properties":{"_id":1732202057470,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"Martin Doyle","level":4,"type":"header"},{"_id":"6LFNV2G4IRFMRIF6X2SVKXBX24","additional_properties":{"_id":1732636637479,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/01/27/glorious-exploits-by-ferdia-lennon-whacky-tale-of-theatrics-war-and-displacement-set-in-syracuse-bc/\">Ferdia Lennon’s Glorious Exploits</a> is a marvellous feat of imagination, set in ancient Sicily, but with Barrytown accents. <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/09/21/intermezzo-by-sally-rooney-a-bold-adventurous-and-captivating-addition-to-an-impressive-body-of-work/\">Intermezzo by Sally Roone</a>y is perceptive and precise, her best yet. <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/05/06/the-alternatives-by-caoilinn-hughes-a-superb-novel-about-sisters-doing-it-in-style/\">The Alternatives by Caoilinn Hughes</a> sparkles with intelligence and wit. Niamh Mulvey’s The Amendments is a warm evocation of Irish women coming of age in a cold social climate. Kevin Barry’s The Heart in Winter is a joyous, riotous Irish western. Colin Barrett’s Wild Houses captures Ireland’s own wild west.","type":"text","paywall":"paywall"},{"_id":"RRFLXO3TX5CZDEGQRN4KOXPBNU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732534636937,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"<i>Martin Doyle is Books Editor of The Irish Times and author of Dirty Linen</i>","type":"text","paywall":"paywall"},{"_id":"TUS6ANJ3M5HS7PFKLQ6P2VATN4","additional_properties":{"_id":1732202057481,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"Claire Hennessy","level":4,"type":"header"},{"_id":"ELOMZ3XJZJBGRAPKI24WA6L62E","additional_properties":{"_id":1732202057482,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"Margaret McDonald’s touching debut, Glasgow Boys, deftly explores male friendship in and out of the care system. <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/10/27/unflinching-examinations-of-contemporary-teenage-life-in-octobers-ya-picks/\" target=\"_blank\">Kathleen Glasgow’s The Glass Girl</a> skilfully and sympathetically tackles addiction and self-worth. <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/06/08/junes-ya-fiction-the-magical-realism-is-grounded-by-sharp-observations-about-teenage-social-dynamics/\" target=\"_blank\">Jenny Valentine’s Us in the Before and After</a> haunts in a variety of ways; <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/09/29/new-ya-titles-for-autumn-from-award-winning-writers-and-illustrators/\" target=\"_blank\">Jandy Nelson’s dreamy When the World Tips Over</a> is a spun-sugar treat. <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/03/17/march-ya-reads-love-in-a-time-of-famine/\" target=\"_blank\">Claire Furniss’s The Things We Leave Behind</a> and Moira Buffini’s Songlight remind us dystopian futures are always relevant.","type":"text","paywall":"paywall"},{"_id":"QNX3R4EDABAA5KALXFCANQLYRM","additional_properties":{"_id":1732202057483,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"<i>Claire Hennessy is a writer and book critic</i>","type":"text","paywall":"paywall"},{"_id":"P7RGDAMJ2NC4PNTK7A6V5FQKWU","additional_properties":{"_id":"6O657DDC3VB6RMT4G76V6EOENY","comments":[]},"content":"New YA titles for autumn from award-winning writers and illustrators","type":"interstitial_link","url":"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/09/29/new-ya-titles-for-autumn-from-award-winning-writers-and-illustrators/"},{"_id":"XBOTUE357FFKXD5ROER3BAIAHM","additional_properties":{"fullSizeResizeUrl":"/resizer/_rRjDG_E5fBAUT8F0cz7VRE6Jzk=/arc-photo-irishtimes/eu-central-1-prod/public/XBOTUE357FFKXD5ROER3BAIAHM.JPG","galleries":[],"ingestionMethod":"manual","iptc_source":"Nick Bradshaw","keywords":[""],"mime_type":"image/jpeg","originalName":"N2411616773.JPG","originalUrl":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/XBOTUE357FFKXD5ROER3BAIAHM.JPG","owner":"nickbradshawvideo@gmail.com","proxyUrl":"/resizer/_rRjDG_E5fBAUT8F0cz7VRE6Jzk=/arc-photo-irishtimes/eu-central-1-prod/public/XBOTUE357FFKXD5ROER3BAIAHM.JPG","published":true,"resizeUrl":"/resizer/_rRjDG_E5fBAUT8F0cz7VRE6Jzk=/arc-photo-irishtimes/eu-central-1-prod/public/XBOTUE357FFKXD5ROER3BAIAHM.JPG","restricted":false,"takenOn":"2024-07-24T16:14:42Z","thumbnailResizeUrl":"/resizer/ifniniY4susI4CkTlEvM7RxvGzE=/300x0/arc-photo-irishtimes/eu-central-1-prod/public/XBOTUE357FFKXD5ROER3BAIAHM.JPG","version":0,"template_id":326,"_id":"WCQM2EJDJRE6ZLR3SB52COWUNE","comments":[]},"address":{},"auth":{"1":"8ad92c7b6915232bd80087f3e98d5d8fb4b7634d32854f5fce197084440346c1"},"caption":"Moira Buffini. 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These stories are dark, macabre, occasionally absurd, sometimes funny and always, always, so deftly written they’ll literally haunt your dreams. I’m already counting the days down to Enriquez’s next publication.","type":"text","paywall":"paywall"},{"_id":"MQ33KU2H5ZC65BJRN65KBC4CAI","additional_properties":{"_id":1732534636971,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"items":[{"_id":"6P6KLJEXOVBPPKJ3TJVAIMRIDI","additional_properties":{"_id":1732534636971,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"block_properties":{},"content":"<i>Jan Carson’s latest work is Quickly, While They Still Have Horses</i>","type":"text"}],"list_type":"unordered","type":"list"},{"_id":"ZILD5YKGAVCFJMTBKDPHQCQTKI","additional_properties":{"fullSizeResizeUrl":"/resizer/vy53Fu-NUTA1xhTY6VQ18u0TbXY=/arc-photo-irishtimes/eu-central-1-prod/public/ZILD5YKGAVCFJMTBKDPHQCQTKI.jpg","galleries":[],"ingestionMethod":"manual","keywords":[""],"mime_type":"image/jpeg","originalName":"Ferdia Lennon Portrait 0208.jpg","originalUrl":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/ZILD5YKGAVCFJMTBKDPHQCQTKI.jpg","owner":"martindoyle@irishtimes.com","proxyUrl":"/resizer/vy53Fu-NUTA1xhTY6VQ18u0TbXY=/arc-photo-irishtimes/eu-central-1-prod/public/ZILD5YKGAVCFJMTBKDPHQCQTKI.jpg","published":true,"resizeUrl":"/resizer/vy53Fu-NUTA1xhTY6VQ18u0TbXY=/arc-photo-irishtimes/eu-central-1-prod/public/ZILD5YKGAVCFJMTBKDPHQCQTKI.jpg","restricted":false,"thumbnailResizeUrl":"/resizer/xL6jGB8VIZ22Bkvk1WxEcG1GhxU=/300x0/arc-photo-irishtimes/eu-central-1-prod/public/ZILD5YKGAVCFJMTBKDPHQCQTKI.jpg","usage_instructions":"Supplied for use with articles that mention the person, event, film, product or brand etc shown in the image. 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This will help us to resolve any future copyright queries."},"syndication":{},"vanity_credits":{"by":[]}},{"_id":"FCLTPP5SXVBNPCHYQR72ITNSFI","additional_properties":{"_id":1732202057490,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"Niamh Donnelly","level":4,"type":"header"},{"_id":"YEEI7YXIDBE5HFCKOOW3HKIP3M","additional_properties":{"_id":1732203179896,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"With all the Sally Rooney discourse, it’s easy to forget how exquisite and immersive her writing is. Intermezzo, which follows two brothers after their father’s death, is her best, most sophisticated work yet. Tracing two interconnected lives, Christine Dwyer Hickey’s Our London Lives captures the London-Irish experience and the ache of missed opportunities. Maggie Armstrong’s voice leaps off the page in her debut story collection, Old Romantics, while Niamh Mulvey’s The Amendments is a wise and astute first novel.","type":"text","paywall":"paywall"},{"_id":"O7H6Z77ZWBCTRGV3PKRBKMEXFA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732203179897,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"items":[{"_id":"NCA5Z2IWURHQRP75ETHN2XIAXI","additional_properties":{"_id":1732203179897,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"block_properties":{},"content":"<i>Niamh Donnelly is a critic and arts journalist</i>","type":"text"}],"list_type":"unordered","type":"list"},{"_id":"QYNDR4HOUJHHXDIGO4F454JUKA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732202057464,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"Tony Clayton-Lea","level":4,"type":"header"},{"_id":"HYEVVUDFMVDERGD4RBWQMXMNTE","additional_properties":{"_id":1732203179867,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"Belfast punk band Ruefrex is the subject of <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/02/03/wild-colonial-boys-is-hard-to-beat/\" target=\"_blank\">Wild Colonial Boys: A Belfast Punk Story</a> by Thomas Paul Burgess, a scathing memoir by the band’s former drummer and songwriter. <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/music/2024/06/26/blondie-guitarist-chris-stein-i-was-always-into-chaos-there-was-nothing-i-shied-away-from/\" target=\"_blank\">Under a Rock by Chris Stein</a> is the Blondie guitarist’s frank account of a life far less ordinary than most. The best dip-into book is You Spin Me Round, a collection of essays by mostly Irish writers that present warmth, wit and sometimes weird outlooks on the profound importance of music.","type":"text","paywall":"paywall"},{"_id":"ULO4HLYYDJGX5FHCJHCSQKNJ4M","additional_properties":{"_id":1732203179868,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"items":[{"_id":"ICS4DNP63ZDBJNLE457ZTBZJ4U","additional_properties":{"_id":1732203179868,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"block_properties":{},"content":"<i>Tony Clayton-Lea writes on pop culture and the arts</i>","type":"text"}],"list_type":"unordered","type":"list"},{"_id":"54YY4WIOTZHNTOEP3GWKG4XWUE","additional_properties":{"_id":1732202057491,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"Louise Kennedy","level":4,"type":"header"},{"_id":"FI2E6FVWZRE3VDDG4NYC5OSPNQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1732534636979,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"I have lately struggled to read fiction, perhaps because I am carrying my own novel-in-progress in my head. An exception is the marvellous <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/04/17/hagstone-by-sinead-gleeson-there-is-a-lyricism-to-this-magical-and-otherworldly-debut-novel/\" target=\"_blank\">Hagstone by Sinéad Gleeson</a>, a gorgeous, haunting, intelligent tale set on a remote island. In Hereafter, poet Vona Groarke constructs the story of her ancestor, who emigrated to New York to work in domestic service. It destroyed me. And please read Woman of Winter, her retelling of the Hag of Beara. Edward Said’s reissued The Question of Palestine, a vital, seminal work, has never been more relevant.","type":"text","paywall":"paywall"},{"_id":"PGERFSRVSFCFFDKLR6K7ZS2QQU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732534636980,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"items":[{"_id":"USRR6RYJSRDJRG3SSEOVGXI7O4","additional_properties":{"_id":1732534636980,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"block_properties":{},"content":"<i>Louise Kennedy’s latest book is Trespasses</i>","type":"text"}],"list_type":"unordered","type":"list"},{"_id":"4STBFOJT2NFBLHENBCUHWAWPTA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732202057454,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"Michael Cronin","level":4,"type":"header"},{"_id":"GDVA45Y5MZG2HBZ4Z3IMLMBNPQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1732272055229,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"Phyllis Gaffney’s remarkable new book, Foreign Tongues: Victorian Language Learning and the Shaping of Modern Ireland, gives an account of the visionary women and men who laid the foundations for modern language learning in Ireland. This is a story that had never before been told. 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years on from his execution in Kilmainham Gaol, we are now presented with newly unearthed writings from <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/james-connolly/\" target=\"_blank\">James Connolly</a>, the most significant figure in the history of Irish socialism.","type":"text"},{"_id":"22ZXDD6ISNF75JXYJL2NHEUP7Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1732113790521},"content":"While letters (both personal and to the press), newspaper columns and fiction writings form the backbone of this important book, there is much for historians of Connolly and the labour movement more broadly to ponder in McCabe’s introduction, which gives an important timeline of publications around the life and output of the Edinburgh-born labour leader.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NZIOVC7WT5C4BKGPVDZ3AU7DUI","additional_properties":{"_id":1732113790522},"content":"Historically, it would seem that the James Connolly put before a readership could often say as much of the publisher as the subject. When William O’Brien of the ITGWU published Socialism and Nationalism in 1948, McCabe notes that “most of the articles were clipped, with sentences and entire paragraphs deleted. Very few were presented as originally intended.” The volume also “surgically removed any complimentary remarks Connolly made towards Larkin”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MMD3G3SN3ZHXNPSMK6S2NLMAEA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732113790523},"content":"The bitterness that had so divided Irish labour in the years after James Larkin’s return from the United States has undoubtedly played a role in how Connolly has been presented in print. Little could anyone have imagined then that these omissions and edits would find their way into the <a href=\"https://www.marxists.org/english.htm\" target=\"_blank\">Marxist Internet Archive</a>, a popular online resource that many scholars have consulted for primary source materials. McCabe has gone back to the original sources, some of which are presented here unedited for the first time since their publication.","type":"text"},{"_id":"L7HWF5D3WFBE7PO4OLVPWTLXQA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732122226854},"content":"The unearthed Connolly material takes many forms, including letters penned to the Edinburgh Evening News. Here we see the rhetorical flourish that would later come to the fore in the Workers’ Republic newspaper, printed and produced in Liberty Hall. In August 1894, Connolly writes that “freedom as a gift from above is valueless, but when won by the active rebellion of the oppressed against the oppressor it becomes a boon more precious than life itself”. Personal letters to Keir Hardie demonstrate Connolly’s importance in the broader labour movement in Britain, while at home the collection reveals interesting new insights on the relationship between Connolly and <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/maud-gonne/\" target=\"_blank\">Maud Gonne</a>, with whom he would form alliances against the second Boer war and in opposing royal visits to Dublin.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FGU7JRMFWZCLJAXB7IS5BAQRC4","additional_properties":{"_id":"RBOAXFC7QRBNTG4URNQR7FBNAY"},"subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"4YH46IW3QNB3ZGPDAUJGC7QP6U","additional_properties":{"_id":1732113790525},"content":"In as much as the later Liberty Hall project of Larkin and Connolly was about industrial unionism, it was also a cultural project. To the Manchester Guardian, it was clear “no Labour headquarters in Europe has contributed so valuably to the brightening of the lives of the hard-driven workers around it”. Here we see the cultural dimension of the man reflected in his fiction. Set in Dublin, A Free Breakfast Table first appeared in print within Labour Leader in June 1895. Though Connolly was then living in Edinburgh, it is full of humour and observation of the city, noting that “there you have Christ Church and St Patrick’s Cathedral restored by the rival efforts of two dealers in strong drink”. Our protagonist wanders Dublin, his head full of thoughts of “the denizens of Montgomery Street rioting in the mansions of Merrion Square”. It is, as McCabe rightly notes, an almost Joycean ramble through the city.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LNZQYQJLHRCHDPOY7N2YC4QGQA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732113790526},"content":"An interesting appendix lists newspaper advertisements and reports for Connolly’s lectures as they appeared in the press. Sometimes, these things connect to later dimensions of his life. We find him speaking on the Paris Commune in Edinburgh in 1892, recalling to me how in numerous later statements to the Bureau of Military History, members of both the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army would recall Connolly lecturing them on urban warfare and the lessons of the Commune.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VYVAELVXDFAQVARV3OYQS2ZR4M","additional_properties":{"_id":1732113790527},"content":"Newspaper notices also give insights into Connolly’s life beyond politics; we find him presiding over an inter-club billiard tournament at the Workingmen’s Club on Wellington Quay in 1896. A further source of interest is an appendix collection of articles penned by John Connolly, a brother and formative influence. John’s writing style immediately recalls that of James; we find a combative and confident propagandist insisting that “the enemies of progress may vent upon our heads all the malice, the meanness, and the calumny at the command of the supporters of a slowly-dying tyranny”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2UV2IT42RVC5LFWZNWENSTSKGU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732113790528},"content":"At the time of his death, there were many obituaries penned to Connolly, but it was Padraic Colum who hit on something fundamental: “He knew history and he knew economics, but he knew, too, that the militant force that was necessary in the Irish cities could not be built around abstractions.” Here is Connolly, practical and polemical, even before he would take up residence in Ireland as an activist or union official. Credit is due to Iskra Books for making this publication freely available online as <a href=\"https://www.iskrabooks.org/_files/ugd/ec1faf_a0a703f49fd64581a43bcf97d927e8a5.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">a downloadable PDF</a> from their website, thus allowing complete versions of some of these writings to exist online for the first time.","type":"text"},{"_id":"R6GGBLQCQFCXVHGMEBASHQ2RAA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732113790529},"content":"<i>Donal Fallon is the presenter of the Three Castles Burning podcast</i>","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"premium"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Donal Fallon"}]},"description":{"basic":"The material includes rhetorical flourishes, humour and a Joycean fictional ramble through Dublin"},"display_date":"2024-12-02T05:00:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"The Lost & Early Writings of James Connolly, 1889-1898, by Conor McCabe: Newly unearthed writings fill out the picture","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"6FKKGGRSYKULZ37RBUYPROPG3Q","auth":{"1":"7e0776c140490fa0412b4a2f16f7770058b017f0dc27d826f324b4c8f3e9f5e1"},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/6FKKGGRSYKULZ37RBUYPROPG3Q.jpg"}},"subtype":"review","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Books"},{"name":"Culture"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/culture/books/review/2024/12/02/the-lost-early-writings-of-james-connolly-1889-1898-by-conor-mccabe-newly-unearthed-writings-fill-out-the-picture/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/culture/books","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Books"}}}},{"_id":"B4DFLC3L4RGIBGIPA5DZHX2EBI","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":762,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/09979022-4c49-4322-95f7-72f1b7420eb6/versions/1732707167/media/d6a356d2cfcc6aa840d66426ee845458_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/culture/books/2024/12/01/amitav-ghosh-ireland-is-where-the-british-created-all-their-colonial-methods-its-where-they-tried-it-out-first/","content_elements":[{"_id":"SKMSEFFS4BFQHKSIUODE5F3ZSA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732629942884},"content":"The late English novelist and playwright <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/william-golding/\" target=\"_blank\">William Golding</a> may appear an unlikely starting point for understanding the multiple crises convulsing our world today. But, for acclaimed Indian writer Amitav Ghosh, childhood reading in the English-speaking world – including Golding’s Lord of the Flies – has something to answer for here.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZDGCI4M4RVB3VHNXTDLRANIDNU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732702641117},"content":"These treasured texts of English literature are part of a story of belligerent individualism that readers “imbibe” from an early age, the Kolkata-born author argues. In recent years, Ghosh has emerged as one of the foremost anglophone voices writing about the <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/environment/climate-crisis/\" target=\"_blank\">climate crisis</a>.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OP7NVGTF4FF3PPYQFUL5XP6YVE","additional_properties":{"_id":1732702641118},"content":"In 2018, he became the first English-language writer to receive the Jnanpith Award, India’s highest literary honour. The following year, Foreign Policy magazine named him one of the most important global thinkers of the preceding decade. On Saturday, Ghosh is to deliver a lecture on one of his recent non-fiction works The Nutmeg’s Curse (2021), coinciding with the launch of a new round of activity being set in motion by the Field Day Theatre Company.","type":"text"},{"_id":"P42735SK6VBS3FERCSNQT7FT7Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1732702641119},"content":"The annual lecture is named after the late <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/seamus-deane-a-passion-for-thinking-1.4605899\">Seamus Deane</a>, a driving intellectual force behind the original project. Along with Deane, actor <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/stephen-rea/\">Stephen Rea</a> and the late playwright <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/brian-friel/\">Brian Friel</a> began Field Day in 1980 as an artistic and intellectual response to what seemed like intractable political crisis in the North, then gripped by the 30-year conflict now known as The Troubles.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LJZMM54CTNCWFEZNWLIZVU7TYI","additional_properties":{"_id":1732702641120},"content":"This new round of work will examine more contemporary concerns: namely, accelerating climate breakdown and its roots in European colonialism, an intertwined history that Ghosh has long traced.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7FB4YSNQ7ZFNXBIFMZVZOU7S5M","additional_properties":{"_id":1732702641121},"content":"Rea told The Irish Times that some of the themes explored in his colleague and cofounder’s most celebrated writing hold relevance for dispossessed communities at the front lines of the climate crisis today. “The issues we began to explore in Brian Friel’s Translations – territory, belonging, language and dispossession through renaming – are still current around the world for indigenous peoples,” he said.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7NHV22QU7BH73FRWN7QAMPKVAU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732702641122},"content":"“Amitav has made a singular contribution to our understanding of the ways in which issues such as climate justice are closely bound up with our histories of colonialism.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"4M7OFBCSBFBWBPGKMW6R3WFQCM","additional_properties":{"_id":"7WHASLIQTNBKJKXOGM5IZ2RHUY"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"HBEME3ZMPJF7HIHSNUICW6M7CU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732792927039},"content":"Ghosh also sees clear crossover between Field Day’s work and his own. “Most of all, [in] questions of place,” he says. “How do we care for a place? How do we inhabit a place? And, equally, issues of humans and non-humans – how they interact with each other.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OUGUA3HMABHYZL47KLXPEV4PC4","additional_properties":{"_id":1732702641123},"content":"“How do we tell stories about this? About human and non-human interactions. That’s something I’ve been very concerned with and, in that sense, there’s an overlap with Field Day, I think.” The power of narrative is evidenced, Ghosh points out, in the developmental arc of man-made climate change itself. But while one dominant story, in particular, has driven the crisis, stories also offer possible ways out.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NKD54SZJWVC2ZNR7WOUNBQ4IZE","additional_properties":{"_id":1732702641124},"content":"“I think it’s very important to tell stories,” he says. “I mean, that’s partly because I’m a storyteller.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2RAC2OHKJNFNBOEPK342JPAMKA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732702641125},"content":"“But, in effect, if we look around us, if we look at the planetary crisis in the broadest possible sense, it is in a sense a crisis that has been brought about by a story: a story of endless profit, endless growth, of individualism.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XTOBWZLPMNEYBJPRBIPIMVQGTM","additional_properties":{"_id":1732702641126},"content":"“And these stories are very deeply planted, especially within the Anglosphere. Children begin to imbibe them from the time they’re in school. They’re made to read Lord of the Flies, for example, which is this whole idea ... that humans are by nature inclined to create a war against all. This isn’t the case at all – it’s just an Anglo view of how the world is.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GZD5OULIDVGZHLX7NUSIWMD5SY","additional_properties":{"_id":1732702641127},"content":"“So I do think it’s very important for us to create new kinds of narratives. And a lot of my work has been pushing in that direction.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"MT2BSLJHCNFRRIFK4E66K7M254","additional_properties":{"_id":1732702641128},"content":"An established set of narratives that Ghosh’s work closely scrutinises are those surrounding European colonialism. Ireland is particularly germane to these concerns, he says, because it is “where the British created all their colonial methods, that’s where they tried it out first”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6AWCBND7BNF5NCVB2H3SXEZ6N4","additional_properties":{"_id":1732702641129},"content":"One way he opens up these points for a contemporary audience is through a reconsideration of plant life, the cultural and economic histories tied up with plants and their figuring in language. In Ghosh’s writing, organic matter is not something inanimate or mute. Plants are revealed to be historical subjects with an astonishing power to influence the events framing our lives.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RYSUE7WL2BC2LEVW3C3SQMDMBE","additional_properties":{"_id":1732702641130},"content":"“I’ve become really interested in the whole question of plant sentience,” he says. “There’s a huge literature on it now. We do know that plants can actually experience certain kinds of emotions. They have certain sorts of responses and reactions.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"6VX4ABAINJH7PEVS3SLKZJAGIM","additional_properties":{"_id":"3XVPXLSQWJE6DD73NRXPFJPLS4"},"content":"How do we cut through the ‘white noise’ of climate change?","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"7FX5BG5AIZDGXJKNZCGJWJ2RRY","additional_properties":{"_id":1732702641131},"content":"In Ghosh’s most recent work, Smoke and Ashes: Opium’s Hidden Histories, as in The Nutmeg’s Curse, plants such as the nutmeg and opium poppy – controlled, commodified and appropriated in the interests of empire – become historical subjects in their own right, shaping world events in critical ways. To illustrate his point, Ghosh underscores the historical roots of the British and Dutch imperial projects as “narco-states”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HDCE2MQLXJG23EFONE6VM6KTVY","additional_properties":{"_id":1732702641132},"content":"“They used opium to finance themselves, especially in Asia, where their revenues rested largely on opium. But it’s a very curious thing to see how opium creates these repetitive patterns throughout history. What opium did to China in the 19th century was to create an absolute political, moral and financial catastrophe for the country. And it took them decades and decades to finally recover in the 20th century. It’s very striking to me today that, with the opioid crisis and the drug crisis in America, generally speaking, we see remarkably similar patterns emerging.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"65CZJCU2Z5GL3CXKOKH6ZSQWIA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732702641133},"content":"In 19th-century China as in the US now, Ghosh adds, “the areas that were most affected were areas with mines and the populations that were most affected were working-class people – miners, et cetera – people who did very heavy physical labour. And, so, I think when you see these patterns, you can’t help but feel that this plant, the opium poppy, is actually a historical agent which is creating certain cyclical patterns in history.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"L6OM27LG75AX3OXTLNMVGD2SY4","additional_properties":{"_id":1732702641135},"content":"More recently, the author says, instructive details concerning the development of the climate crisis could be spotted in this decade’s Covid-19 pandemic. The public health emergency not only reshaped domestic and international politics, in Ghosh’s eyes – it was a “forerunner”, or dry run, for the big political battles of the 21st century.","type":"text"},{"_id":"X3PVRJJXKBFRTIORHSVP3HQWSE","additional_properties":{"_id":1732702641136},"content":"It also prompted a degree of undue optimism, he says, as one crisis gave way to other, deeper crises. “I think, on the whole, what we see is that epidemics actually don’t lead to any kind of rethinking. So, for example, the 1918 influenza [Spanish flu] epidemic – immediately after that, you get this huge stock market bubble. People go back to doing whatever they were doing and they do it at triple intensity. And that’s exactly what we see after Covid.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"MMB4W67CJBAMZG22KUVV2FJBXY","additional_properties":{"_id":"XIEBYV2NBBC3XP43MRNPNMOOYQ"},"subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"OSBTVMENKVG5DA7644XLZ3CTUM","additional_properties":{"_id":1732702641137},"content":"There were lessons, however, concerning western vulnerabilities to growing climate instability and a lack of preparedness. In the last number of weeks, this has been underscored by the devastation wreaked by hurricanes in the US and flash floods in Spain. Covid-19 was, to Ghosh, “in many ways a forerunner of what’s going to happen as climate change intensifies. And I think it shows us the patterns of certain outcomes.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QHJFABDL3NF5BKCDFBZ2STJDDY","additional_properties":{"_id":1732702641138},"content":"“So, for example, the standard narrative on climate change is that climate change will devastate poor countries, while allowing rich countries to come through and [find themselves] not being that badly affected. There was the same narrative around Covid.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZZQJCLLE2JDOJLNZK5NXG2CEGE","additional_properties":{"_id":1732702641139},"content":"“You’ll remember in 2019, there was a study done on which countries were the best-prepared for the pandemic and the results were published. Naturally, the US was on top, the UK second, and then a whole string of European countries. And, of course, African countries were right at the bottom.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GIZLMIYSSVG4RJVTLUKW636JRU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732702641140},"content":"“But, in fact, the way that it played out was almost the opposite of what this study had found. Many African countries, like Senegal, had very good outcomes, comparatively speaking. Whereas the US and the UK had the worst outcomes – not just in terms of people dying of disease, but [also] the degree of polarisation that it created.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"WEMUXNIXL5DMHNBQZU3B4VMXYQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1732702641141},"content":"However, in another important sense, Ghosh believes the world is entering a new chapter – with potentially disastrous outcomes for those most vulnerable to the effects of climate breakdown. “For 400 years, Europe and the West have been dominant across the globe,” he says. “Now, suddenly, we’re finding that it’s no longer dominant – we find especially that Europe has become quite marginal to what’s happening in global politics.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"7IRBSI4DYNDYNELM6OPSPI7XS4","additional_properties":{"_id":1732702641142},"content":"As UN climate talks concluded at the Cop29 summit in Azerbaijan, in the shadow of a <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/world/us/2024/11/07/what-does-trumps-win-mean-for-the-eu-ukraine-china-and-middle-east/\">second Trump presidency</a>, Ghosh sees so-called developing nations increasingly adopting a “western, extractivist model” of economic growth. It is one of a number of consequences of 35 years of US global dominance, he says, adding that its decline may produce yet more damaging fallout.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZRAMVKLGGJCHTLKNQSAJSEHFVM","additional_properties":{"_id":"VMDVPSHDSRDEHGSF2VNJ5RV2H4"},"content":"Disappointing $300bn Cop29 deal could yet become a platform for much greater ambition","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"FCC5PT3DPZA7BKN3L5DLHMGAC4","additional_properties":{"_id":1732702641143},"content":"“I think it’s very important to remember that half the greenhouse gases that are in the atmosphere have been put there since 1990,” he says. “That is, since the end of the Cold War, since the ‘unipolar moment’, since the establishment of American hegemony, and along with that went the Washington Model – extractivism, rampant consumerism and so on.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WYULR2T2JZHONJJUS3OQ4HFOG4","additional_properties":{"_id":1732702641144},"content":"“It was that impetus that has really accelerated the climate crisis. It would have happened at some point, maybe, anyway. But since 1990, since that geopolitical moment, it has hugely accelerated.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"WKXFWPC5QJCTRPA44BJX735EGM","additional_properties":{"_id":1732792927063},"content":"Ghosh even traces the big pollution events choking some of Ireland’s most important freshwater bodies, at <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/environment/2023/09/23/the-lough-isnt-just-dying-its-been-killed-a-curdled-mess-of-pollution-chokes-lough-neagh/\">Lough Neagh</a> and <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/environment/climate-crisis/2023/11/30/lough-corribs-hidden-diversity-in-desperate-need-of-co-ordinated-protection/\">Lough Corrib</a>, back to the growth-driven policy initiatives of this period.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YWD2YHTS75G5BP7T7XGH3BAEIE","additional_properties":{"_id":1732702641145},"content":"“Now, the curious thing, of course, is that it’s in this period that the EU put in place these very market-oriented policies, especially in regards to agriculture, pushing models of industrial agriculture, which now have led to disaster.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RVTQL4OIDNA6ZFVT6MJ6EVFSEU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732702641146},"content":"“In the Netherlands, for example, these huge lakes of nitrogen, which have built up because of industrial farming. So, all of that really goes back to that one geopolitical moment.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"IZ4FKZVUQJCBJMWMUMMPXAZUQU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732702641147},"content":"Diminishing US hegemony and a shift towards a multipolar world, however, will not mitigate climate breakdown, Ghosh reflects. Instead, a new contest for geopolitical supremacy will bring about a “massive intensification” of the crisis.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MCZ63IJZIJA4RBUVGUDNVHQ4GA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732702641148},"content":"“Basically, it’s a disaster for the climate,” he says. “These wars that have broken out [in Ukraine and the Middle East], because, as we all know, the single most environmentally destructive environmental activity is war.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QOLD46SAQVEFZCST3X3U2UNWZQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1732792927068},"content":"“These wars are intensifying ... One thing these wars have made clear is where the world’s priorities lie.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"SRLQF67NBRFFDFMUPSZJL55US4","additional_properties":{"_id":1732702641149},"content":"He adds: “Climate as an issue has now become completely marginal, even as we’re seeing more and more climate disasters occurring all around us. We’re living through an absolutely catastrophic conjuncture of events.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"M32AC35KSFBKJLNLHCLKIHS2OU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732702641150},"content":"<i>The Seamus Deane Lecture 2024 is scheduled to take place at the Guildhall, Derry, on Saturday, November 30th. Amitav Ghosh and Stephen Rea will also speak at the Royal Irish Academy of Music, Whyte Recital Hall, Dublin, on Sunday, December 1st. That lecture is the flagship </i><a href=\"https://dublin.nd.edu/\"><i>Notre Dame Dublin</i></a><i> event for the 2024 </i><a href=\"https://forum2024.nd.edu/\"><i>Notre Dame Forum</i></a><i>.</i>","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Tommy Greene"}]},"description":{"basic":"Acclaimed Indian writer Amitav Ghosh’s new work explores how the climate crisis has its roots in European colonialism"},"display_date":"2024-12-01T06:00:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Amitav Ghosh: ‘Ireland is where the British created all their colonial methods, it’s where they tried it out first’","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"BSYMYMRWC5EUJNJDFNAHCSEE5I","auth":{"1":"e70ba5b7bccf8ab728e2be9f546d91cfc2bbedac11d268138c6592dc8ec39b85"},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/BSYMYMRWC5EUJNJDFNAHCSEE5I.jpg"}},"subtype":"feature","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Books"},{"name":"Culture"},{"name":"People"},{"name":"Life & Style"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/culture/books/2024/12/01/amitav-ghosh-ireland-is-where-the-british-created-all-their-colonial-methods-its-where-they-tried-it-out-first/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/culture/books","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Books"}}}},{"_id":"RKWBPAZKPVASJFJAKOEIKA2F5I","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":440,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/ebf4c63e-079b-4b9d-a82c-c42d5b519440/versions/1732115199/media/8e1aaef9b18d8829fab8fd03e7f744ae_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/culture/books/review/2024/12/01/crime-fiction-new-works-by-nick-harkaway-louise-penny-scott-phillips-david-safier-and-jane-casey/","content_elements":[{"_id":"KK76LS3D7JG3ZKAPKX53RCP7EQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1732109028396},"content":"For the past few decades, any half-decent author referencing moles and spooks and the Berlin Wall was immediately hailed as the heir to John le Carré. Some were worthier than others (take a bow, Mick Herron); most, unaware of what made le Carré truly great, were knocking off pale imitations. How satisfying it is, then, to discover that the true heir to John le Carré is Nick Harkaway, aka Nicholas Cornwell, the maestro’s son.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DUQWYW36OZF2RCRA3B5IQDQDUI","additional_properties":{"_id":1732112085476},"content":"<b>Karla’s Choice</b> (Viking, £22) is set in 1963, between the events outlined in the novels The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963) and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1974), at a time when George Smiley has resigned from the Circus due to the catastrophic failure of Operation Windfall (”Of the fate of Alex Leamas a few scant months before, no one spoke.”). When a Russian hitman arrives in London to assassinate the ostensibly harmless Hungarian literary agent László Bánáti, only to suffer a religiously inspired crisis of faith that causes him to abort his mission, Smiley is hauled back into harness by Control and charged with discovering who the mysterious (and now vanished) Bánáti really is, and why the Kremlin needs him taken off the board.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WIGVRSFWGNHSPPPJY4ER64ZULA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732112085477},"content":"Le Carré afficionados will appreciate that the title refers to Smiley’s Russian equivalent, the faceless KGB puppet-master and the worst kind of enemy during the Cold War: “a hard sort of fellow, a true believer”. What follows is a stunning piece of literary ventriloquism. Harkaway avails of a wonderful supporting cast already in play – Control, Connie Sachs, Toby Esterhase, Peter Guillam, Jim Prideaux – but it’s his phenomenal ability to get under the skin of these familiar faces, and create memorable new characters such as the Hungarian refugee Susanna Gero, that sets him apart from all other pretenders to le Carré's throne. The novel is a triumph; the long-suffering George Smiley, it seems, will be deferring his anticipated retirement for some time to come.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4JPU44NEBRBWDNUQMOZV4Q3E24","additional_properties":{"_id":1732109028397},"content":"<b>The Grey Wolf</b> (Hodder & Stoughton, £20), Louise Penny’s 19th novel to feature Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec, opens in a whimsical fashion with a break-in at Gamache’s Montreal apartment that is followed by an unexpected request from the burglar, who wishes to meet the chief inspector in order to return some stolen items. This is all a touch contrived, but when the meeting concludes with the burglar being murdered while a helpless Gamache looks on, the story quickly moves into high gear.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HHV6SPUB7FBRXCIYSRL4IAG7SU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732112085479},"content":"Gamache realises that the Sûreté is compromised by an informer in the ranks, and that Montreal is facing an existential crisis as a terrorist group plots to introduce a lethal poison to the city’s water supply. The plot is a delight, featuring as it does a shoal of red herrings, the recipe for Chartreuse, chart-topping musical monks, TS Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral and the threat to the world’s water security as climate change puts the squeeze on natural resources. All told, it’s a hugely entertaining read.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MA4RXYAVYJBJ5B5ZTI75QHDSIA","additional_properties":{"_id":"GEJOKFDIDFHNRENEYUAYEASZVY"},"content":"Crime fiction: Graeme McCrae Burnet, Paula Hawkins, Kate Summerscale, Ian Rankin and the debut of the year from IS Berry","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"FFJ76TN3ZBFULGN7MZE2XWERFM","additional_properties":{"_id":1732109028398},"content":"Scott Phillips’s Cottonwood (2004) delivered a vivid portrait of a 19th-century Kansas frontier town courtesy of its protagonist, the photographer and bon vivant Bill Ogden, who bears witness to a (real-life) serial killer’s spree. <b>The Devil Raises His Own</b> (Soho Crime, £25.99) finds Bill in Los Angeles in 1916, when Hollywood’s early years were mirrored by a booming business in stag movies.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CN5EDYCWZNGSXPNESOYTU7CD2A","additional_properties":{"_id":1732112085481},"content":"Bill’s sharply observant eye is undiminished by time, allowing Phillips to deliver a dark-stained noir punctuated by arson, pornography, gunplay, blackmail and the occasional murder by claw-hammer. But while he frequently avails of the opportunities for violence and mayhem that the sprawling, anonymous Los Angeles boomtown creates, Phillips roots his story in superb characters whose concerns are the stuff of tragedy: the single mother Trudy, a blue movie actor who suppresses her true sexuality; Purity Dove, the Hollywood ingenue who is little more than a plaything to the powerful men who run the studios; and Henry Seghers, a man who is always just one step ahead of poverty’s gaping maw. Tough and brutal, but also poignant and tender, The Devil Raises His Own is a novel to rank alongside Phillips’s excellent The Ice Harvest (2000).","type":"text"},{"_id":"YMV4L65MKFG7PLUFISANET44B4","additional_properties":{"_id":1732109028399},"content":"Angela Merkel, the former German chancellor, is looking forward to a quiet retirement out of the limelight. Alas, a murder occurs in the idyllic village of Klein-Freudenstadt, where Angela has come to live with her husband Achim, devoted bodyguard Mike and new pug Putin, causing Angela to wonder whether she might not be able to solve this latest problem to present itself, even if “she was about as much of a genuine detective as Melania Trump was a genuine feminist”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6YHZWNAXKRG4FLSRWGKVX5JJNY","additional_properties":{"_id":1732112085483},"content":"So begins David Safier’s <b>Murder at the Castle</b> (Old Street Publishing, £14.99), in which Angela deploys her people skills and brilliantly analytic mind to become a German Miss Marple, all the while littering her inner monologues with disparaging references to the many famous (and infamous) personages she has encountered during her storied political career. Translated by Jamie Bulloch, the conceit here is daring and initially charming, but the joke may wear a little thin for crime fiction fans whose reading preferences skew towards gritty realism.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VA6GSPI5HFG7VFGAZ6FQBKG5HU","additional_properties":{"_id":"HRZ5I5LDPBHL7M2GPPJ66ODQKU"},"content":"Crime fiction: The thriller people said couldn’t be done; and one of Robert Harris’s finest","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"7BE7LD3GJFCO3N3XSESVIJOCYA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732109028400},"content":"Jane Casey built her considerable reputation on a series of superb novels featuring Maeve Kerrigan, the London-based police detective whose tough exterior masked a delicately observed fragile persona. <b>The Outsider </b>(Hemlock Press, £8.99) is a standalone novel that shoots off at a tangent to Kerrigan’s world, as Rob Langton – Maeve’s heartbroken ex-boyfriend – puts his life on the line by infiltrating the family of Geraint Carter, the wealthy, civilised face of a gangland mob.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RLBIOWWCYFFSVGQPSDQOTULJSQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1732112085485},"content":"On the payroll as a chauffeur-fixer-gofer, Langton eases into the luxurious world of Haulton House where Carter holds court and spins his dreams of a new world order. For Carter is no ordinary criminal; a man of extreme private passions, Carter is a racist who is plotting a “spectacular” that will incite anti-Muslim sentiment and pave the way for a political revolution intended to restore England to its former racial purity.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QRXMQLGIANDMHGRJGNBB7UK45I","additional_properties":{"_id":1732112085486},"content":"A timely novel, to say the least of it, The Outsider employs the conventions of spy fiction to devastating effect, as Casey skewers nativist populism, the enablers of domestic violence and the arrogant patriarchy of the old boys’ club in an understated thriller that quietly thrums along at a breakneck pace – think Succession with an undercover agent of chaos tossed into the maelstrom and you won’t be too far off the mark. Casey’s fans will always want more Maeve Kerrigan, of course, and understandably so, but The Outsider is a novel that easily matches the quality of her best work to date.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TWPRVHWES5C5ZBL2ETBVPA36SI","additional_properties":{"_id":1732109028401},"content":"<i>Declan Burke’s latest novel is The Lammisters</i>","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"premium"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Declan Burke"}},"name":"Declan Burke"}]},"description":{"basic":"Stunning literary ventriloquism will see George Smiley defer his retirement for some time to come, while Scott Phillips delivers a dark-stained noir punctuated by arson and murder by claw-hammer"},"display_date":"2024-12-01T05:00:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Crime fiction: New works by Nick Harkaway, Louise Penny, Scott Phillips, David Safier and Jane Casey","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"4GKINDSOKBGDDDEQYKW2RKZJNQ","auth":{"1":"93cc47e7c97b3a594b7611950f4ac6b4dd2f95d4c72a7e47d21ef284ff578bf2"},"focal_point":{"x":943,"y":667},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/4GKINDSOKBGDDDEQYKW2RKZJNQ.jpg"}},"subtype":"review","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Books"},{"name":"Culture"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/culture/books/review/2024/12/01/crime-fiction-new-works-by-nick-harkaway-louise-penny-scott-phillips-david-safier-and-jane-casey/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/culture/books","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Books"}}}},{"_id":"QWF3GZYHTVHPNE3A4TL2NF5ROA","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":338,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/5c096d36-da08-4c76-953d-b4e1593ea698/versions/1732625624/media/88d9e136673d0fbcdedb3713681d36a1_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/culture/books/review/2024/11/30/irish-cities-in-crisis-a-call-to-arms-on-the-challenges-of-housing-a-rapidly-growing-population/","content_elements":[{"_id":"FX4FOITQYNEHFHMJVGKHEFGABM","additional_properties":{"_id":"3JGCJ23S6JFNXDCWGBSGGITSMM"},"embed":{"config":{},"id":"review-highlights-1682","url":"/"},"subtype":"review_powerup","type":"custom_embed"},{"_id":"B4SHFSJBDVAIXKCW6UU5BQ2Q34","additional_properties":{"_id":1732114464373},"content":"This is a weighty book, at 2.6kg. Produced by the Irish Cities 2070 think tank, which is backed by the Irish Academy of Engineering and the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland, it also deals with weighty issues – primarily how, and where, we might accommodate an anticipated population of up to 11 million on this island within the next 50 years.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4EMZVRFRN5AXRFEM4T6LDQZPOA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732114464374},"content":"Irish Cities in Crisis is a wide-ranging compendium of illustrated essays by multiple authors, all experts in their own fields. It’s billed as a “call to arms” for active engagement in reaching a consensus on how to meet this challenge – anchored by “sound planning principles” and the common good, rather than “individual or corporate agendas”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UVC3GSZKC5CKJPTGOLDAW5MQK4","additional_properties":{"_id":1732114464375},"content":"The biggest obstacle, as its authors note, is the centralisation of power in Ireland, which leaves little autonomy for regional and local authorities – unlike in Europe, where successful city governments are “led by skilled mayors, politicians, planners, urban designers and others who collaborate to envision, plan, design and manage urban development”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Z4C2UFMSKJELXB24U42THM6U7M","additional_properties":{"_id":1732114464376},"content":"Given that<i> five times</i> as many planners here are currently employed in the private sector as in the public service, they argue that a paradigm shift is needed. “That is what this book is about – it describes where we are now, what changes need to be made in Irish attitudes to urbanism, what might the future of cities look like and how might we get there”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2S22MGVR3ZDKPONGBV2EJDAIIY","additional_properties":{"_id":1732114464377},"content":"Decrying a rural bias that has bedevilled Irish planning for decades, it stresses the importance of cities as the “primary vehicles for economic growth, cultural development, education, sustainability and democracy”, and says the map of Ireland should be redrawn to create regions with a minimum population of 700,000, each anchored by a city of scale.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XYYTF6GX7NB4XJPF7ZYM4BEGNI","additional_properties":{"_id":1732114464378},"content":"Although there is an acknowledgment that the Dublin region has “grown disproportionately, leading to severe regional imbalances across the country”, the authors put forward no prescription for rectifying this. Quite the contrary, in fact. Any attempt to curtail the capital’s growth is seen by demographer Brian Hughes as equivalent to the “self-harm” of Brexit.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZRSQGR7ELBCZVPEEKBDVQPQSPA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732114464379},"content":"Figures compiled by the Southern Regional Assembly show that the Dublin metropolitan area’s population increased by <i>more than three times</i> the combined figure for Cork, Limerick, Galway and Waterford between 2016 and 2022. This rather undermines Hughes’s contention that the 2018 National Planning Framework imposed a “growth cap” on Dublin.","type":"text"},{"_id":"554XCS4J4JEMRIGEZ24C5C3BVA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732114464380},"content":"Disappointingly, among the smaller four, only Galway gets detailed treatment in the book, which includes an already published Irish Cities 2070 analysis of the city, its strengths and weaknesses. Even though this stressed the need for better public transport and more active travel, it also endorsed the proposed N6 “relief route” that could facilitate yet more ex-urban sprawl.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5P4UXIV4KNCNRKLSGWOJ7J2AGU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732114464381},"content":"Some of the most valuable insights in Irish Cites in Crisis are actually about cities elsewhere in Europe – Amsterdam, Bordeaux, Bristol, Copenhagen, Eindhoven, Freiburg, Leipzig and Málaga – and how they have managed planning, transport and urban design by contrast with us. The book also includes useful tool kits and checklists for practitioners.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PNED3JX4CNEZZD44IMW4SVQDM4","additional_properties":{"_id":1732114464382},"content":"But taking steps to ensure that each of the Republic’s “second-tier” cities acquires critical mass is barely addressed. Instead, the authors accept as inevitable that Dublin’s population will double by 2070 and that “the focus of much of Ireland’s future settlement expansion will continue to be in Leinster” – surely a recipe for consolidating regional imbalance.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WPUPNGBICBF3XFDTB5EYXJZNIM","additional_properties":{"_id":1732114464383},"content":"As for where people would live, architect Tony Reddy puts forward a bold plan for “Nova Eblana” (Ptolemy’s name for Dublin) to build up to 70,000 homes on the 265 hectares of land occupied by Dublin Port – after it was replaced by a new port at Bremore, north of Balbriggan. Obviously, this new settlement would need to be protected from sea-level rise.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CXKJ6WGLQ5B4JB3O4AJAKSINSM","additional_properties":{"_id":1732114464384},"content":"The emerging agglomeration around Drogheda – including Bettystown, Laytown and Mornington – is seen as a future city. Confusingly, it is rendered as “Drogheda BLM”, “Drogheda LBM” and even “Drogheda LBMD” in different tables in the text. Neither could I find any reference to the appalling levels of vacancy and dereliction in the town’s medieval core.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FHM4Q2K6WFC5PCIOSMEL5HBUAU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732114464385},"content":"In a hard-hitting foreword, Freiburg’s former chief planner Prof Wulf Daseking condemns the “characterless” uniformity of new development in Ireland, saying “it is clear that investors dictate what happens” here. “The question of who is planning the city and who is responsible for it is crucial for the future: show me your city and I’ll tell you who you are!!!”","type":"text"},{"_id":"BGORZMQ4ANHYZFINQANHR5ZNMQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1732114464386},"content":"However, any idea that Ireland could move to more inclusive community-based planning has been set aside by the replacement in its entirety of the progressive 2000 Planning Act with the dystopian legislation recently rammed through the Oireachtas. It goes in the opposite direction, by reinforcing rigid centralised control over what happens at local level.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ADZC3TZ2S5ED3BZ6OLVW3HVRWE","additional_properties":{"_id":1732114464387},"content":"<i>Frank McDonald is The Irish Times’s former environment editor. His books include The Destruction of Dublin, The Construction of Dublin, and A Little History of the Future of Dublin</i>","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"premium"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Frank McDonald"}},"name":"Frank McDonald"}]},"description":{"basic":"A wide-ranging compilation of essays by the Irish Cities 2070 think tank, which is backed by the Irish Academy of Engineering and the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland"},"display_date":"2024-11-30T06:32:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Irish Cities in Crisis: A ‘call to arms’ on the challenges of housing a rapidly growing population","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"DJLVUQH6U5CNFG4SDHF3VTBHCY","auth":{"1":"fa7b62d8c245cac941fe6313403101d1e6b4f4a592874046f2f09e4632131b5b"},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/DJLVUQH6U5CNFG4SDHF3VTBHCY.jpg"}},"subtype":"review","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Books"},{"name":"Culture"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/culture/books/review/2024/11/30/irish-cities-in-crisis-a-call-to-arms-on-the-challenges-of-housing-a-rapidly-growing-population/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/culture/books","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Books"}}}},{"_id":"KIFUI5A2VRFB5K2NAXPY5KESU4","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":416,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/5d6650e8-0f91-430d-9dfb-42947c3eab0c/versions/1732627391/media/26057c7385743356a9df5169b1aad16b_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/culture/books/2024/11/30/teachers-behind-new-book-of-refugees-stories-want-to-challenge-stereotypes/","content_elements":[{"_id":"J33P2AI3ZBEWLI2LUL43HTI3AU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732555153771},"content":"“When I was 16, our home in the refugee camp was stormed by Israeli soldiers. I was at home with my father, my brother and two of my uncles ... They told us to run and as we ran, they were shooting after us.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"X7S3PCW56JEPLOILQSBLIDXNRY","additional_properties":{"_id":1732625813267},"content":"So begins the story of Asad, one of several people whose experience of seeking refuge in Ireland has been shared in a new book called Are We Human?","type":"text"},{"_id":"T7BEUYGNWJDNFPAOSPSCMJOLOQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1732625813268},"content":"Published by Examcraft, the book combines stories of refugees, asylum seekers and migrants, featuring contributors from <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/palestine/\" target=\"_blank\">Palestine</a>, <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/iran/\" target=\"_blank\">Iran</a>, Zimbabwe, <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/world/europe/ukraine-war/\" target=\"_blank\">Ukraine</a>, <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/world/africa/2023/04/04/sierra-leone-one-of-the-most-dangerous-countries-in-the-world-in-which-to-give-birth/\" target=\"_blank\">Sierra Leone</a>, <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/democratic-republic-of-congo/\" target=\"_blank\">Congo</a>, <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/sudan/\" target=\"_blank\">Sudan</a>, <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/eritrea/\" target=\"_blank\">Eritrea</a>, <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/ghana/\" target=\"_blank\">Ghana</a>, Nigeria, Lesotho and <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/somalia/\" target=\"_blank\">Somalia</a>, whilst also drawing attention to “the compassion of Irish strangers who selflessly help those in need”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"32V5PP7T4ZD3PBACEOQ3S4UQVA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732555153772},"content":"Leah O’Shaughnessy and Melanie Martin, two secondary-school teachers from <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/tallaght/\" target=\"_blank\">Tallaght</a> Community School, co-wrote the book in the wake of the <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/dublin-riots/\" target=\"_blank\">Dublin riots</a>.","type":"text"},{"_id":"E2OQOJ5I7VF3RNUPNRDJR2WI6Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1732625813270},"content":"The pair said that the riots that took place in the capital’s city centre on November 23rd last year were “one of the major catalysts for the book” and sparked “conversations about the landscape of Ireland at that moment in time and actually how it was very frightening for a lot of people”. For O’Shaughnessy, the scenes that unfolded that night left her “almost paralysed with fear”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZBGXSKUQ2NE6NIYWMDUME3CSUQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1732555153774},"content":"“I was at home with my husband and we were watching it on the telly and I just remember I was gripped with fear. My husband is Irish-African and he had to travel for work the next day ... When we woke up, I begged him not to leave the house.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"NG2XXRMN6BHPHPWNZ6PCH43PDM","additional_properties":{"_id":1732555153775},"content":"She recalls reflecting on the night’s events as she taught her classes, “I just thought if I’m gripped with that fear, this very privileged white woman ... look at all these children in front of me, children of colour, and the fear that they have to feel.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"XRGK73QM2NHVFNJOCVNY24RTAQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1732555153776},"content":"Having previously published their first book Resilience and Me, a compilation of stories from their students, in response to the pandemic, Martin and O’Shaughnessy said they wanted to go “one step further” with Are We Human?","type":"text"},{"_id":"J2BYG3DFGNEXRI5NA3VTUBMVGU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732555153777},"content":"“Examcraft trusted us to create a book to go into the national market and not just the school market in order to try to challenge the voice that was out there and stand up to the fearmongering and stereotyping that we were seeing.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"XW457SOXCRET5KDSQPULTLQ26M","additional_properties":{"_id":"WYJWRYQ3ZJAHVBXF6UMI5I3BHA"},"subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"4HHKH5ODARBXRA3EL4GCTNXRVE","additional_properties":{"_id":1732555153778},"content":"In the initial stages of working on the book, O’Shaughnessy and Martin said some friends and family expressed their concern over potential backlash they might face. “They’ve said why would you do that, you’re mad.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"JQBAOSWHQRBJBHDTT3E6N5722A","additional_properties":{"_id":1732555153779},"content":"“That was something me and Mel discussed at the very beginning ... We both looked at each other and said when I see the struggle they’ve been through and what they’ve overcome then I can take all of the backlash and I’ll take it for them because they deserve a platform and they deserve for their voices to be heard,” says O’Shaughnessy.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DYMWEPKJ65BEHDA4ZXDZ7OLQVU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732555153780},"content":"Martin shares how the pair conducted a series of interviews to compile the stories featured in the book, reflecting on the power of fostering personal relationships with people in doing so.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WYHEEWBSJBAOVGX4LKEA5HAEK4","additional_properties":{"_id":1732555153781},"content":"“Initially we thought people might be able to write their own stories but actually realised how that instantly is a barrier ... we figured out fairly quickly that you have to connect before you do anything else.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"JLQ4HK4UMJAMBC253Y3VV5NANM","additional_properties":{"_id":1732555153782},"content":"“We had some people that remained anonymous to us, had their cameras off on screen and then as they got to know us, they turned their cameras on and have become our friends,” she adds.","type":"text"},{"_id":"P4VZYX4ONBC53L7G7FALYFTB6Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1732555153783},"content":"O’Shaughnessy highlights authenticity as a key part of this process: “We weren’t trying to push any kind of agenda by only telling certain stories. We told the stories that we found.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"5OXDQTNVG5DIBKCFEOEGMXHCPE","additional_properties":{"_id":1732555153784},"content":"“We didn’t pick and choose which stories went in and which stories didn’t. We went on this journey, we met people and whoever shared their story is in that book. It wasn’t like we laid them all on a table and picked the best of a bunch.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"BU4EDBX4CBGIHLTV5DCNA2CD6E","additional_properties":{"_id":"Y3IBUGJLQ5FB7GPK2PFODMPR7M"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"JDA4XAEQZ5DZTBFGOJSD24HFFI","additional_properties":{"_id":1732555153785},"content":"After listening to an interview their teachers did with RTÉ's Oliver Callan, the students at Tallaght Community School were curious about how the asylum seeking application works.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TJRRIZTYHNGPVGIK6UFKB5WHQE","additional_properties":{"_id":1732555153786},"content":"“We had a full lesson where we listened to an interview that me and Mel did last week and we were very much challenged on the issue,” says O’Shaughnessy, who teaches more senior students in the school.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HICK2OMVB5DPDHGVEG4DWFOQWA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732555153787},"content":"“We’d pause it at key points and discuss it and afterwards I read a story from the book to them. When they heard I was creating a book with Mel about refugees and asylum seekers, there might have been a little bit of side-eyeing and like a pause, but when I read that story to them you could feel the empathy in the room... It has the power to completely change your perspective.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"NLXGFQMNWRGVRKU6S2PYPRHQPE","additional_properties":{"_id":1732555153788},"content":"Speaking of how online misinformation about <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/immigration/\" target=\"_blank\">immigration</a> can shape dialogue, O’Shaughnessy says this was evident in the conversations that were had in her classroom. “The kids are on social media all the time and I can say, without a shadow of a doubt, they do consume some kind of content that is anti-immigration, whether it’s deliberate or not.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"UUVY5IKVBJF5ZLUD5EBJBSSE7Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1732555153794},"content":"The book’s cover image, designed by Renato da Cunha and Ana Carolina Amaral Fernandes, depicts a man’s face in black and white with his eyes obscured by the title.","type":"text"},{"_id":"V7CSSRFMFVAAFG5JQEBB2IXPKY","additional_properties":{"_id":1732555153796},"content":"Martin shares the inspiration behind this creative decision: “We didn’t want to reveal someone’s face. Often we become desensitised because social media and the media will give you the most graphic image. Ana covers the eyes, because the eyes are the windows to the soul.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"NOC7WKW7GZFAHDWZYYPQZQKVIY","additional_properties":{"_id":1732555153797},"content":"“And when you dehumanise somebody, you’ve taken that away from them and the image from the cover of the book very much represents a cohort that have carried the brunt of the dehumanisation, those young men, who actually are more so a target for hate,” O’Shaughnessy continues.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6OMBLQGKFVFZRICU43EMJ4VDAE","additional_properties":{"_id":1732555153799},"content":"The teachers hope to dispel some damaging misconceptions about immigration by sharing these stories, highlighting how “immigration gets tangled up with the homelessness crisis”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6HK2EO57M5GMDID3UNSRGGD2VI","additional_properties":{"_id":1732555153802},"content":"“There are people who have the power in this country to fix the homelessness crisis and they are not the people that are sleeping in tents. With the anger and frustration, let’s just channel that down the right alleyways. I always say Ireland is not full, Ireland is abandoned.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"CR7A7DBVDJFWXB2436IAI2ZF3U","additional_properties":{"_id":1732555153804},"content":"“It doesn’t have to be us or them. 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