Said the Dead is a book that was born in the archive. It grew from hundreds of hours spent studying a series of casebooks that had been rescued from the cellars of a derelict hospital nearby. By the time I happened to find these books in the archive, they were over a century old and incredibly fragile, their pages brittle and crumbling – but inside, another world was alive. I began with casebooks from the 1890s and slowly read my way towards the 1920s. Many of the books were printed with the name of the institution, ‘Cork District Lunatic Asylum’, a title I could never get used to, always flinching at the word ‘lunatic’, so abrasive to the …
Category: Irish
My best friend in school and college, Maria Gillis, reminded me recently that when we were in sixth year in Mount St Anne’s, during one religion class I asked our …
By John Banville I have a thing against Venice. In fact, I have a number of things against Venice. The avarice. The tourists. The smells. Some years ago I was …
Garrett Carr on help he received from old fishermen when writing The Boy from the Sea. The Boy from the Sea unfolds over twenty years and is about a fishing …
A darkly epic novel about connection, disconnection and destruction – from the New York Times-bestselling, National Book Award-winning, Booker Prize-longlisted author of Let the Great World Spin. Twist by Colum …
I have always been drawn to untold stories. Perhaps this instinct stems from the immigrant experience, having been brought up by Irish parents living in England, who then migrated back …
Join master storyteller Kieran Fanning as he visits every county in Ireland through 32 spine-chilling tales. Here’s a sneak peek from Dublin! THE DOLOCHER If you walk up the steps …
We are delighted to share a blog by Niall Williams on his latest publication, Time of The Child. It seems to me that all novelists are explorers of unknown worlds. …
Our bookseller Ryan, in Dubray Cork interviews author Shauna Lawless on her latest novel, The Land of the Living and the Dead! Shauna Lawless first came on the scene with …
Saying goodbye has never been easy for me. I was very much reminded of that while writing ‘Don’t Look Back in Ongar’, the 24th and FINAL novel in the Ross O’Carroll-Kelly …
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