Bøker utgitt av New Island Books

An English-Irish phrasebook compiled by leading Irish-language scholar and lexicographer. Of particular interest to those learning the language and schools market.

Between 1958 and 1976, the Irish-American writer Mary Lavin published sixteen stories in The New Yorker. It was a prolific time for the writer, helped in no small part by her close working relationship with her chief editor, Rachel MacKenzie. During those years, they wrote nearly 400 letters to each other, the topics of which ranged from story edits to their holiday plans, windfalls and legal troubles, promotions and health emergencies. Within a year of working together, they were ending their letters with 'love', 'gratefully' and 'affectionately'.Gráinne Hurley's impressive debut, 'Gratefully and Affectionately' Mary Lavin & The New Yorker, draws extensively from these letters as well as other New Yorker-related material, to explore the collaborative relationship between this writer and her editor, Lavin's own writing process, the inner workings (personnel, financial, political) and editing procedures of The New Yorker and the process of publishing a story from manuscript to print during its heyday.It brings fascinating insight into the lives and careers of two, mid-20th-century working women, operating on either side of the Atlantic, and inhabiting the small but hallowed world of literary publishing. It reveals just how practical and pro-active they needed to be to be seen and successful in a male-dominated industry.

A humorous and insightful look at the origins of some of Ireland's more colourful and interesting words.

A moving and insightful anthology of personal essays by Irish autistic adults.

A wild boy with a ferocious imagination will stop at nothing to protect his family from the darkness on the edges of their unstable rural life.

From the popular author of What's That as Gaeilge?, a one stop shop for anyone learning or re-learning the Irish language.

Essays that explore cityscapes, loneliness, the emotional impact of history, diasporic transience, girlhood, family connections to Maeve Brennan and more create space for a broader engagement with Brennan's life and the ongoing impact of her work.

On the eve of World War II, several hundred persecuted Jews, mainly from Nazi-occupied Vienna, tried to escape to Northern Ireland. They had learned of a Stormont scheme to tackle the region's chronic unemployment by offering financial support for skilled professionals to move to the province to stimulate local economic growth.Almost all applicants were rejected, and more than 125 of these men, women and children were murdered in the Holocaust.Based on extensive archival research, unpublished family memoirs and letters, and interviews with Holocaust survivors and their descendants, this extraordinary book describes the applicants' desperate efforts to save their families and themselves, as well as highlighting the tireless work undertaken by many Northern Irish civil servants in the application process. It also explores how the small numbers of refugees admitted to Northern Ireland made a major contribution to its economic, social and cultural life that continues to this day.

Hidden behind the walls of Grangegorman Mental Hospital in 1941, four lives collide, all afflicted by the human cost of wars, betrayals and trauma.Gus, a shrewd attendant, is the keeper of everyone's secrets, especially his own. Two War of Independence veterans are reunited. One, Jimmy Nolan, has spent twenty years as a psychiatric patient, unable to recover from his involvement in youthful killings. In contrast, Francis Dillon has prospered as a businessman, until rumours of Civil War atrocities cause his collapse, suffering delusions of enemies seeking to kill him.Doctor Fairfax has fled London after his gay lover's death. Desperate to rekindle a sense of purpose, Fairfax tries to help Dillon recover by getting him to talk about his past. But a code of silence surrounds the traumatic violence Ireland has endured. Is Dillon willing to break his silence to find a way back to his family?In this superb evocation of hidden worlds, master storyteller Dermot Bolger explores the aftershock within people who participate in violence and the fault-lines in all post-conflict societies only held together by collective amnesia.

If the past is another country - what happens when we revisit it, one day a year?Carlo Gébler has done just that. Here is the story of Ireland - from the tail end of the Troubles to the Good Friday agreement, to the glory days of the Celtic Tiger to the recession to Brexit and on to the present, where, it appears, everything we thought we could take for granted is no longer a given.Drawing from journals he has kept for over four decades, Gébler stitches together days of his life into something bigger than his own lived experiences - a vivid patchwork history of the island over thirty-five years, capturing those sweeping changes in sharp, funny, slantwise pieces that will prompt readers to reflect on the strange process of how we got here.This intelligent and affectionate compilation, written in Gébler's sparkling prose, is a joy. Whether read from beginning to end or dipped into, it will appeal to anyone with even a passing interest in the astonishing evolution of our island.

After first emerging in the 1920s, ladies Gaelic football was soon sidelined; breathless women chasing after a football was just too unladylike for the powers that be.Despite this resistance, the sport became a popular novelty act at local carnivals. And when the Ladies GaelicFootball Association (LGFA) was founded in Tipperary in July 1974, fifty years of extraordinary growth were set in motion. From writing the rule book to a membership of nearly 200,000, the earliest All-Stars to game-changing partnerships, this definitive history captures that unstoppable journey to becoming a national sport and so much more.Lavishly illustrated and drawing from national, club and personal archives, UNLADYLIKE is for the players, the fans, the kit-washers, the sandwich-makers and the supporters alike, and confirms the best is yet to come.

Ireland has little left of its original natural habitats. Many species, like the curlew, are under pressure due to intensive practices such as farming, forestry and fisheries and some are threatened with extinction. But given a little help from us, nature has the innate capacity to restore itself.Nature restoration is the positive management of the environment for the benefit of wildlife and people. It looks to the future, by steering natural habitats and wildlife in a better and more sustainable direction.In Future Wild: Nature Restoration in Ireland, Richard Nairn explores numerous active restoration projects around Ireland which show how natural habitats and native species can be restored sustainably for the benefit of everyone. From individual landowners and voluntary organisations to state bodies such as Bord na Móna, he meets the people who are dedicated to nature restoration.By turns shocking, hopeful and finally positive, Future Wild shows that the damage we have done to nature can also be undone by us, and that, with nature restoration, we can create a richer and more diverse environment for generations to come.

Over a decade, Fishamble commissioned and called for submissions of tiny plays that reflected major changes in Irish society from 2011-2021. Inviting playwrights to submit plays of less than 600 words, the company produced 50 tiny plays in Tiny Plays for Ireland, 10 tiny plays in Tiny Plays 24/7, and 10 tiny plays in partnership with ESB in Tiny Plays for a Brighter Future.These productions of tiny plays created a patchwork quilt of theatre to reflect the times through which we were living. They were performed in Project Arts Centre Dublin, Irish Arts Center New York, and Kennedy Center Washington DC, as well as shared online. This anthology publishes all 70 tiny plays, providing an invaluable resource of four-minute plays for actors, directors, students, and teachers.

It's the early 1980s, and Fiona and her family have recently moved back from England to the family farm in Mayo. Fiona's huge-hearted mum decides to take in foster children, short term, through the local social services. It's a decision that will change all their lives. Over the next decade, a procession of faces passes through the house; every face, every child, has their own story, and each story claims a little piece of Fiona's heart. Some stay a few weeks; some months, and then years.Through Fiona's eyes, we meet tiny Gerard, lost in his babygro; toddler Bea, whose mama calls from London every week for hugs and kisses; and baby Blue, whose social worker brings him to visit his mother in hospital. Then there are the sisters, Bernadette, who is all fizz, and Máiread, who cries all the time. Slowly, we learn the story of the sisters and the trauma that lives in their heads from the dark home they come from. Máiread ultimately stays with Fiona's family until she is grown up.We also hear of the chaotic system through which all these children, as well as Fiona and her family, must pass, where a judge's cold decision can alter a child's life, for better or worse, where emergency placements can break up siblings, where the foster family are often left in the dark and with little back-up.

A baby's body. The butcher who found it. His wife who won't talk to him. Her lady with a secret. The detective on their heels.

The modern story of LGBTQ liberation in Ireland is often framed as one of success, with the triumph of the Marriage Equality referendum in 2015, the passing of the Gender Recognition Act that same year, and later the ascendancy of LGBTQ figure Leo Varadkar to the height of power as Taoiseach in 2017. While a lot has changed for LGBTQ liberation more broadly in Ireland, that is only half the story. The variety of LGBTQ life across the island is too abundant and too diverse to be contained to these singular moments of progress. Ireland's growing LGBTQ archives, along with the community who lived through decades of activism, contain a rich wealth of records and stories relating to the country's LGBTQ communities. This book digs deep into these archives and people's stories. In doing so, the book excavates a community's history, built by generations of LGBTQ people to offer a rich and kaleidoscopic window into the lesser told stories of Ireland's LGBTQ activism and history, from the visit of Hollywood royalty to Dublin's "gay scene", to the mother of a gay son who caught the ear of a government minister and changed history, to a group of LGBTQ people who became involved in the Republican struggle to how Ireland's current President fought against conservatism to ensure an AIDS awareness campaign made it to television. These are just some of the stories that spin a rich tapestry of LGBTQ life in Ireland. As we approach 50 years since the founding of a gay rights movement in Ireland in 2024, Reeling in the Queers, seeks to offer an overview of individual perseverance, poignant losses and stirring collective gains, as it provides a front row seat to over 50 years of LGBTQ life across the island, while lifting the lid on Ireland's hidden histories.

Bestselling and award-winning Irish author, Nuala O'Connor, returns with the intimate and thrilling portrayal of the life of 18th-century Irishwoman, Anne Bonny.

In 2023, Garry Bannister's Teasáras Gaeilge-Béarla proved beyond doubt the enthusiasm for his particular brand of Irish reference works. Described by The Irish Times as a 'marvel' and nominated for an Irish Book Award, Irish-speakers queued up to buy it.Now Bannister is back, with a brand new Irish-English phrasebook that will sit perfectly alongside the perennially popular What's That as Gaeilge? and Proverbs in Irish.What's That as Béarla? will improve and enrich your spoken Irish skills for an upcoming oral examination or if you simply want to make your written and spoken Irish a tad more colloquial. This book is ideal for anyone interested in the beauty, flavour and rhythm of the living, modern language.With lead words in Irish this reference book is perfect for intermediate Irish language speakers seeking to expand and enrich their vocabulary and terms of expression.

WAY OUT WEST is a gentle coming-of-age story that will enthral with its texture and world-building, the many delicately and affectionately observed characters and its subtle reflections on trauma, loss and a hope that somehow renews.

A beautiful and devastating new story by acclaimed Irish poet, Anne Walsh Donnelly.

Following the success of her lockdown collection What Day Is It? Who Gives a F*ck, Jan Brierton returns with a new collection of 52 poems that riff on menopause, midlife, the mental load, friendships, relationships, loss and self-acceptance.

Cork's most beautifully spoken millionaire is on a mission to help Ireland's nouveau riche: learn to eat, drink, flirt and behave as if you were a member of Cork's One Per Cent.

A pair of novellas, set over two pivotal summers in the lives of two young men from Belfast, recall the constraints of the place where they were born and the times in which they are living. Capturing the innocence of adolescent boys, their passion, confusion and yearning, Two Summers is for anyone who has ever been young.

The first comprehensive account of one of the darkest and mostly forgotten episodes of the Troubles.

The long-awaited latest book in the much loved Sunday Miscellany series from RTÉ Radio 1.

Marking the centenary of Yeats's Nobel Prize, a timely guide to the work of Ireland's national poet and the changing Ireland he lived through.

In rich and abundant illustrations, Annie West tells a rowdy story of artistic struggle, ego and unexpected kindness. You will never look at the Irish Literary Canon in the same way again.

Part of the Open Door series of short books for emerging readers, now translated for the first time into Irish with the support of An Chomhairle um Oideachas Gaeltachta agus Gaelscolaíochta, and ideal for learners of the Irish language