Dublin’s fair city has changed in recent years. Cranes have come to dominate its skyline and people of all hues – Polish, Chinese and African as well as Irish – now throng its streets. Yet one essential aspect remains the same. Dublin still has its literary heritage, a heritage that revolves around poets, pints and pubs. If Parisian writers were inspired by café life, their … [Read more...] about Poets & Pubs in Dublin: A Literary Tour
Writers and Poets
Review of Books
Recommended Roddy Doyle, bestselling Irish author of The Commitments, has completed his Last Roundup trilogy about IRA rebel Henry Smart with the epic and engrossing finale The Dead Republic. The series, which includes novels A Star Called Henry and Oh! Play That Thing and spans the 20th-century history of Ireland, traces the journey of the legendary character as he passes … [Read more...] about Review of Books
A Trip to the Bountiful: Mary Beth Keane
The Irish immigrant experience is no stranger to the world of fiction, but in The Walking People, Irish American Mary Beth Keane captures the nuances of one woman’s journey in this promising first novel. Protagonist Greta Cahill, cast aside early in her life as a “simple girl,” is destined to face gross underestimation not only of her intelligence but of her ability to lead a … [Read more...] about A Trip to the Bountiful: Mary Beth Keane
Review of Books
Recommended T he Brightest Star in the Sky is another good romp by Dublin-based writer Marian Keyes. Keyes first burst on the scene with Watermelon in 1995 and went on to write several bestsellers including This Charming Man (2008). In her latest book, Keyes uses the interesting literary device of a wandering ghost to give us an inside look at the residents of a block of … [Read more...] about Review of Books
A Journey Beyond Imagination
Brian Keenan, Belfast-born, was teaching English at the American University of Beirut when he was kidnapped by fundamentalist Shi'ite militiamen on April 11, 1986. It was during the Lebanese Civil War. His captors mistakenly took him for British. Released in August, 1990, he went on to write an acclaimed memoir about his captivity, called An Evil Cradling. He was in New York to … [Read more...] about A Journey Beyond Imagination