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Eggshells
WINNER OF THE ROONEY PRIZE 2018 A modern Irish literary gem for anyone who has felt like the odd one out. ‘Inventive, funny and, ultimately, moving’ GUARDIAN ‘Wildly funny’ THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW ‘Beguiling’ THE IRISH TIMES ‘Delightfully quirky’ THE IRISH INDEPENDENT
Wunderland
Caitriona Lally's sophomore novel centres around an outsider protagonist, Roy, an Irishman exiled from Ireland to Hamburg for unknown reasons. In his new, simple life he works as a cleaner at the Wunderland miniature exhibition where he is more comfortable meddling in the tiny scenes than he is in interacting with his co-workers and visitors to the museum. To Roy's almost total indifference, his sister Gert visits for a few days, the first of their family to do so since his exile, and she patiently and then not-so-patiently tries to talk to him and discover what really prompted his move away. But Gert is fighting her own demons, having checked out of her exhausting family life where she is losing herself in the face of her husband's deepening depression.
The Hurlers
In 1882, a letter was published in the Irish Times, lamenting the decline of hurling. The game was now played only in a few isolated rural pockets, and according to no fixed set of rules. It would have been absurd to imagine that, within five years, an all-Ireland hurling championship would be underway, under the auspices of a powerful national organization. The Hurlers is a superbly readable account of that dramatic turn of events, of the colourful men who made it happen, and of the political intrigues and violent rows that marked the early years of the GAA. From the very start, republican and ecclesiastical interests jockeyed for control, along with a small core of enthusiasts who were jus...
The Bray House
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The Fish Girl
Winner of the 2017 Seizure Viva La Novella Prize Sparked by the description of a ‘Malay trollope’ in W. Somerset Maugham’s story, ‘The Four Dutchmen’, Mirandi Riwoe’s novella, The Fish Girl, tells of an Indonesian girl whose life is changed irrevocably when she moves from a small fishing village to work in the house of a Dutch merchant. There she finds both hardship and tenderness as her traditional past and colonial present collide. Told with an exquisitely restrained voice and coloured with lush description, this moving book will stay with you long after the last page.
The Sisters Mao
A Sunday Independent Book of the Year Against the backdrop of China’s Cultural Revolution and Europe’s sexual revolution, the fates of two families in London and Beijing become unexpectedly intertwined, in this dazzling new novel from the author of Mrs Engels. Revolution is a Family Affair. In London, sisters Iris and Eva, members of a radical performance collective, plan an attack on the West End theatre where their mother is playing the title role in Miss Julie. Meanwhile in Beijing, Jiang Qing, Chairman Mao’s wife, rehearses a gala performance of her model ballet, The Red Detachment of Women, which she will use in order to attack her enemies in the Party. As the preparations for these two astonishing performances unfold, Iris, Eva, and Jiang Qing are transformed into unforgettable protagonists in a single epic drama. The three ‘sisters’, although fighting very different personal battles, find themselves bound together by the passions of love, by the obsessions of power, and by the forces of history. Exquisitely observed, relevant, and wise, The Sisters Mao shows us that the political is always personal.
Midwinter Break
A Guardian / Sunday Times / Irish Times / Herald Scotland / Mail on Sunday Book of the Year Winner of the Bord Gáis Novel of the Year ‘Midwinter Break is a work of extraordinary emotional precision and sympathy, about coming to terms – to an honest reckoning – with love and the loss of love, with memory and pain...this is a novel of great ambition by an artist at the height of his powers’ Colm Tóibín A retired couple, Gerry and Stella Gilmore, fly to Amsterdam for a midwinter break. A holiday to refresh the senses, to see the sights and to generally take stock of what remains of their lives. But amongst the wintry streets and icy canals we see their relationship fracturing beneath the surface. And when memories re-emerge of a troubled time in their native Ireland things begin to fall apart. As their midwinter break comes to an end, we understand how far apart they are – and can only watch as they struggle to save themselves.
The Zhivago Affair
The story of a forbidden book that became a symbol of freedom and rebellion in the battle between East and West. 1956. Boris Pasternak presses a manuscript into the hands of an Italian publishing scout with these words: ‘This is Doctor Zhivago. May it make its way around the world.’ Pasternak knew his novel would never be published in the Soviet Union as the authorities regarded it as seditious, so, instead, he allowed it to be published in translation all over the world - a highly dangerous act. 1958. The life of this extraordinary book enters the realms of the spy novel. The CIA, recognising that the Cold War was primarily an ideological battle, published Doctor Zhivago in Russian and smuggled it into the Soviet Union. It was immediately snapped up on the black market. Pasternak was later forced to renounce the Nobel Prize in Literature, igniting worldwide political scandal. With first access to previously classified CIA files, The Zhivago Affair gives an irresistible portrait of Pasternak, and takes us deep into the Cold War, back to a time when literature had the power to shake the world. A Spectator and Sunday Times Book of the Year
The Maker of Swans
'Compulsive reading . . . rich, strange, beautiful' Helen Macdonald, author of H is for Hawk 'A strange, new and captivating look at a magical realm . . . Lavishly entertaining' Independent 'Enthralling . . . a literary feast' Stylist The world had forgotten Mr Crowe and his mysterious gifts. Until he killed the poet. He lived a secluded life in the fading grandeur of his country estate. His companions were his faithful manservant and his ward, Clara, a silent, bookish girl who has gifts of her own. Now Dr Chastern, the leader of a secret society, arrives at the estate to call Crowe to account and keep his powers in check. But it is Clara's even greater gifts that he comes to covet most. She must learn to use them quickly, if she is to save them all.
