Sometime in the late 1990s, I read Herman Hesse’s 1927 novel Steppenwolf and was awed by a passage that prophesied the great destruction coming to Europe. Harry Haller, that book’s antihero, observed with a cold eye the public unrest in Germany, the fragmentation of its politics, the racism and xenophobia that was parading openly on the streets. In youthful fancy, I wondered about the thrill of being alive during such times. The 1990s, after all, seemed hopelessly dull, and political …
Category: Literature
Nearly fifteen years ago, a man was found dead on a beach in the north-west of Ireland. Nobody knew who he was or where he had come from. The man …
Service is a story about the abuse of power, set in a buzzy, high-end Dublin restaurant at the height of the boom. It’s told from three perspectives – waitress Hannah …
We all make lists every day. They’re the most mundane form of writing – or are they? Lists can be much stranger than they appear. Shopping lists, to-do lists, wish lists …
My fiction debut, The Amusements, is a novel of interconnected stories set in the seaside town of Tramore – a place I know well because my family are from Waterford. With the …
About ten years ago I was touring my stand-up comedy show in England. Doing my due diligenceon the town I was performing in one night, I stumbled upon a chilling, …
Recent Comments