Anthologies
A unique joint effort finds seven of Ireland's most acclaimed writers, including Roddy Doyle, Colm Toi+a7bi+a7n, and Joseph O'Connor, joining talents to recount the last wild and disreputable night of a once proud Dublin hotel that has definitely seen much better times. Original. 35,000 first printing.
For Colm Toíbín and Carmen Callil there is no difference between literary and commercial writing - there is only the good novel: engrossing, inspirational, compelling. In their selection of the best 200 novels written since 1950, the editors make a case for the best and the best-loved works and argue why each should be considered a modern classic. Enlightening, often unexpected and always engaging this tour through the world of fiction is full of surprises, forgotten masterpieces and a valuable guide to what to read next. Authors in the collection include Agatha Christie, Georgette Heyer, Daphne du Maurier, Patrick Hamilton, Carson McCullers, J. D. Salinger, Bernard Malamud; Flannery O'Connor, Mulk Raj Anand, Raymond Chandler, L. P. Hartley, Amos Tutuola, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Samuel Beckett, Patricia Highsmith, Chinua Achebe, Isak Dineson, Alan Sillitoe, Ivy Compton-Burnett, Grace Paley, Harper Lee, Olivia Manning and Mordecai Richler.
An evocative compilation of the best in Irish short fiction includes excerpts from Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, James Joyce's "The Dead," "Castle Rackrent" by Maria Edgeworth, John McGahern's "The Country Funeral," and works by Samuel Becket, Oscar Wilde, Emma Donoghue, Bram Stoker, Sheridan Le Fanu, and other notable authors. 17,500 first printing.
New writers, new writing, new here is writing that leaps into its own time, that crackles with now. Our cities, our journeys, our love affairs, our familiar landscapes, are at once immediate and awry, recognizable yet unexpected. This eleventh edition of the annual, Picador New Writing 11 showcases writers chosen by Andrew OHagan and Colm Tibn. It is an idiosyncratic and exhilarating collection.
In 2001 a group of authors including Andrew O'Hagan, Tony Hawks and Irvine Welsh were given the opportunity to visit Sudan, one of the world's most inaccessible countries. The resulting book: The Weekenders - Travels in the Heart of Africa was an award-winning triumph, combining fiction and non-fiction into a compelling travel narrative that was both entertaining and illuminating. Now the Weekenders are back, joined by some new faces and taking on one of the world's most fascinating and contradictory cities - Calcutta. It promises to be a trip like nothing you've ever seen or heard of before-'Powerful- affecting-' TLS 'Thoroughly enjoyable- a story for our times-' Literary Review
"Discovering Proust is like wandering through a totally unfamiliar land and finding it peopled with kindred spirits and sister souls and fellow countrymen . . . They speak our language, our dialect, share our blind-spots and are awkward in exactly the same way we are, just as their manner of lacing every access of sorrow with slapstick reminds us so much of how we do it when we are sad and wish to hide it, that surely we are not alone and not as strange as we feared we were. And here lies the paradox. So long as a writer tells us what he and only he can see, then surely he speaks our language." --from the preface by André Aciman For The Proust Project , editor André Aciman asked twenty-eight writers--Shirley Hazzard, Lydia Davis, Richard Howard, Alain de Botton, Diane Johnson, Edmund White, and others--to choose a favorite passage from In Search of Lost Time and introduce it in a brief essay. Gathered together, along with the passages themselves (and a synopsis that guides the reader from one passage to the next), these essays form the perfect introduction to the greatest novel of the last century, and the perfect gift for any Proustian. FSG will co-publish The Proust Project in a deluxe edition with Turtle Point Press, Books & Co., and Helen Marx Books. André Aciman is the author of Out of Egypt and False Papers . He is also a frequent contributor to The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books . Aciman teaches comparative literature at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.For The Proust Project , editor André Aciman asked twenty-eight writers—among them Shirley Hazzard, Lydia Davis, Richard Howard, Alain de Botton, Diane Johnson, Edmund White, Geoffrey O'Brien, Wayne Koestenbaum, Susan Minot, Andrew Solomon, and Louis Auchincloss—to choose a favorite passage from In Search of Lost Time and introduce it in a brief essay. As gathered togethered here, along with the translated passages themselves (and a synopsis that guides the reader from one passage to the next), these essays form the perfect introduction to the greatest novel of the last century. "Discovering Proust is like wandering through a totally unfamiliar land and finding it peopled with kindred spirits and sister souls and fellow countrymen . . . They speak our language, our dialect, share our blind-spots, and are awkward in exactly the same way we are, just as their manner of lacing every access of sorrow with slapstick reminds us so much of how we do it when we are sad and wish to hide it, that surely we are not alone and not as strange as we feared we were. And here lies the paradox. So long as a writer tells us what he and only he can see, then surely he speaks our language."— André Aciman, from his Preface "Editor Andre Aciman's introductory essays gracefully place the individual passages in the larger context of the multivolume novel with great skill. He also provides the most penetrating essay on In Search of Lost Time in his preface."— Barbara Fisher, The Boston Globe
Last year when Garry Hynes asked me to edit a book on Synge, I realised that a great seachange had taken place in relation to his work. Once, he would have been viewed by many readers and writers as an old-fashioned figure whose influence was harmful, whose stage-Irishness was not to be taken seriously. Now, he has become a fascinating and ambiguous genius, whose language is rich with wit and nuance and unpredictability. He worked, as Yeats said, with a living speech, and the way he worked, his ingenuity, his style, has come to mean a lot to contemporary writers. The gap between his own shyness, his quietness and the noise his characters make is a great example of the gap between the being who suffers and the mind which creates. Although he was mild-mannered, he had no respect for current pieties, and he made this part of the fierce and uncompromising energy of his plays. Also, his book on the Aran Islands, so careful, watchful, respectful, is understood by all of us to be a masterpiece. Thus it was not hard to approach writers to contribute a piece on Synge, to help produce a book as varied and unpredictable as Synge’s own work. The brief was open – use any form, any length, to pay homage to Synge, or argue with him, or conjure up the writer who has become our contemporary. It meant a lot that we were doing this for the Druid Synge Season – when all six major plays will be presented in repertory for the first time – because the Druid Synge productions over the past quarter century have, more than anything else, been responsible for our fresh understanding of Synge’s genius. (Colm Toíbín)
A radiant reflection of contemporary fiction at its best, The O. Henry Prize Stories 2006 features stories from locales as diverse as Russia, Zimbabwe, and the rural American South. Series editor Laura Furman considered thousands of stories in hundreds of literary magazines before selecting the winners, which are accompanied here by short essays from each of the three eminent jurors on his or her favorite story, as well as observations from all twenty prize winners on what inspired them. Ranging in tone from arch humor to self-deluding obsessiveness to fairy-tale ingenuousness, these stories are a treasury of potential classics.
In 2009, the Glyndebourne Festival of Opera reaches its 75th year. In commemoration of this event, Jeanette Winterson has brought together some of the best loved and most critically acclaimed authors writing today to pen stories inspired by opera. A foreword from Ralph Fiennes and an introduction by Jeanette Winterson are followed by: Alexander McCall Smith on Cosi Fan Tutte; Ali Smith on Fidelio; Andrew Motion on Peter Grimes; Andrew O'Hagan on Eugene Onegin; Ann Enright on Rusalka;; Colm Toibin on Pearl Fishers; Jackie Kay on The Makropulos Case; Joanna Trollope on L'Elisir d'Amore; John Mortimer on Cosi Fan Tutte; Julie Myerson on The Crowning of Poppaea; Kate Atkinson on La Traviata; Kate Mosse on Pelleas et Melisande; Lynne Truss on The Turn of the Screw; Marina Warner on Dido and Aeneas; Posy Simmonds double page of 'Glyndebourne Midsummer Night'; Ruth Rendell on Theodora; Sebastian Barry on Natoma; Toby Litt on Don Giovanni.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was created in 1948 as a direct response to the inhumanity suffered worldwide throughout, and following, World War Two. In 2008, to celebrate the UDHR's 60th anniversary, Seán Love who was executive director of Amnesty International (Ireland) at the time, and author Roddy Doyle decided to celebrate this magnificent declaration, whilst also publicizing the document itself. Dealing with topics as outlined in the UDHR, the articles tackle the varied subjects of fair trials, prison, torture, war, refugees, but also, education, poverty, health, leisure, employment, and housing. Containing 30 articles with an introduction by Poet Laureate Seamus Heaney, this book is a special commemoration to the work of the UDHR and Amnesty International. In a modern twist, it also features a special 'My article' by popular fictional wealthy former schoolboy rugby player Ross O'Carroll-Kelly (created by journalist Paul Howard) adding to the contemporary worth of this collection. Contributors: Robert Ballagh Kevin Barry Maeve Binchy Mary Rose Binchy Dermot Bolger John Boyne Alan Clarke Eoin Colfer John Connolly Barrie Cooke Roddy Doyle Anne Enright Zlata Filipovic Jim Fitzpatrick Carlo Gébler Hugo Hamilton Seamus Heaney Dermot Healy Ann Marie Hourihane Tom Humphries Jennifer Johnston Neil Jordan Claire Kilroy Louis le Brocquy Brian Maguire Alice Maher Lara Marlowe Nick Miller Lia Mills Eugene McCabe Colum McCann Frank McCourt Gary Mitchell Éilís Ní Dhuibhne Ross O'Carroll-Kelly Joseph O'Connor Mick O'Dea Mark O'Halloran Glenn Patterson Vivienne Roche Amelia Stein Gerard Stembridge Colm Tóibín Irvine Welsh
Barcelona INK is the city's only literary magazine in English. This first collection of the best of its first eight issues is an intriguing mix. Including work by writers and poets such as Philip Levine, P.J. Kavanagh and Richard Gwyn alongside interviews with the city's more notorious literary residents such as Colm Tóibín, Rupert Thomson and Lydia Lunch, not only is it a fantastic read, but it also offers a very different angle on this popular Catalan city.
In a unique collaboration between Artangel and Living Architecture, a dwelling was built on top of London's Queen Elizabeth Hall. The dwelling was a boat, Roi de Belges, inspired by the Thames and by Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Writers and artists were given short residencies and wrote about the strange experience of staying in a boat overlooking the river. This book, a collection of their pieces responding to Conrad's masterpiece, is a result of that collaboration. From Juan Gabriel Vásquez's meditation on belonging, identity and the otherness of London to Michael Ondaatje's piercing reflections on history and literature, via Jeanette Winterson's lyrical, impressionistic musings and Caryl Philips's supple and poetic observations, this is Joseph Conrad, the Thames and the capital city as you have never experienced them before.
In this collection of essays, ten leading writers from different countries consider the conflicts that have informed their own literary lives. 1914-Goodbye to All That borrows its title from Robert Graves's "bitter leave-taking of England" in which he writes not only of the First World War but the questions it raised: how to live, how to live with each other, and how to write. Interpreting this title as broadly and ambiguously as Graves intended, these essays mark the War's centenary by reinvigorating these questions. The book includes Elif Shafak on an inheritance of silence in Turkey, Ali Smith on lost voices in Scotland, Xiaolu Guo on the 100,000 Chinese sent to the Front, Daniel Kehlmann on hypnotism in Berlin, Colm Toibin on Lady Gregory losing her son fighting for Britain as she fought for an independent Ireland, Kamila Shamsie on reimagining Karachi, Erwin Mortier on occupied Belgium's legacy of shame, NoViolet Bulawayo on Zimbabwe and clarity, Ales Steger on resisting history in Slovenia, and Jeanette Winterson on what art is for. Contributors include: Ali Smith - Scotland Ales Steger - Slovenia Jeanette Winterson - England Elif Shafak - Turkey NoViolet Bulawayo - Zimbabwe Colm Toíbín - Ireland Xiaolu Guo - China Erwin Mortier - Belgium Kamila Shamsie - Pakistan Daniel Kehlmann - Germany
Profound, lyrical, shocking, wise: the short story is capable of almost anything. This collection of 100 of the finest stories ever written ranges from the essential to the unexpected, the traditional to the surreal. Wide in scope, both beautiful and vast, this is the perfect companion for any fiction lover. Here are childhood favourites and neglected masters, twenty-first century wits and national treasures, Man Booker Prize winners and Nobel Laureates. Featuring an all-star cast of authors, including Kate Atkinson, Julian Barnes, Angela Carter, Anton Chekhov, Richmal Crompton, Charles Dickens, Roald Dahl, Penelope Fitzgerald, Gustave Flaubert, Rudyard Kipling, Somerset Maugham, Ian McEwan, Alice Munro, V.S. Pritchett, Thomas Pynchon, Muriel Spark and Colm Tóibín, THAT GLIMPSE OF TRUTH is the biggest, most handsome collection of short fiction in print today.
All Over Ireland, edited by Deirdre Madden ( Molly Fox's Birthday, Time Present and Time Past ), continues the tradition of featuring the work of both new and established writers, including Colm Tóibín, Mary Morrissy and Eoin McNamee. These diverse and accomplished stories, by turns dazzling, thoughtful and startling, bring new ideas and energy to the form and richly enhance the tradition of Irish fiction.