Bøker i Irish Literature Series-serien

Considered to be one of the best Irish writers of the twentieth century, Aidan Higgins has earned a reputation throughout Europe as an unusual and astringent prose stylist. This omnibus of selected short fiction is the perfect introduction to the talents of this Irish successor to James Joyce and Samuel Beckett (although Higgins's work is perhaps more reminiscent of his Welsh contemporary Dylan Thomas), and displays Higgins's warmth of language and character. From a melancholy tale of suicide in "North Salt Holdings" to a colorful depiction of J. J. Catchpole's escapades in "Catchpole, " Higgins builds his characters into touching failures who both attract and repulse the reader.

Opening with a quote from Richard Brautigan--"I've been examining half-scraps of my childhood. They are pieces of distant life that have no form or meaning."--Scenes from a Receding Past constructs the adolescence and early adulthood of Dan Ruttle out of a variety of scenes and reminiscences about his life in Ireland, his time in a Catholic school, his first experiences with his sexuality, and his brother's mental breakdown. The second half of the book centers around his relationship with his future wife Olivia, her past, and her former lovers. Calling to mind Joyce's Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man for Dan Ruttle's love-hate relationship with Ireland, and the stylistic innovations employed by Higgins, Scenes from a Receding Past is a masterpiece from one of Ireland's greatest contemporary writers.

The Dogs of Inishere collects stories from across Alannah Hop-kin's thirty-year career as a fiction and travel writer. The stories presented here move from adolescence to middle age, sensitive always to the particular social, emotional, and intellectual challenges of the different phases of a life.

From Laurence Sterne to Flann O'Brien and beyond, this anthology presents both highly familiar and relatively obscure writers from across the history of Irish fiction. It offers a fresh perspectives, and a provocative reshuffling of the literary canon.

When Albert Jackson, a middle-aged school teacher, catches a glimpse of the infinite universe and his own tiny insignificance he cannot shake himself free of regret for a life all but squandered. In a blind and demented attempt to salvage something from his life, he sets off, half-lucidly, on a mission to reclaim life, to live it on his terms.

This intriguing novel brings us to a future in which electricity is scarce and Dublin has gone to seed. Hawk-eyed octogenarian Monk is keeping assorted desperate characters under strict surveillance -- among them Schroeder, recently sacked from Trinity College, now stalking a reporter in the days leading up to the visit of the U. S. President. When the unthinkable happens and the President is assassinated, Monk sets about discovering what's happened to those in his care and, along the way, to the late President -- but this is not, he insists, the story of an assassination. Nor is it a thriller. It's the truth.