Literary Ireland
Of all their national traits, characteristics and cultural expressions, it’s perhaps the way the Irish speak and write that best distinguishes them. Their love of language and their great oral tradition have contributed to Ireland’s legacy of world-renowned writers and storytellers. All this in a language imposed on them by a foreign invader.
The Mythic Cycle
Before there was anything like modern literature there was the Ulaid (Ulster) Cycle – Ireland's version of the Homeric epic – written down from oral tradition between the 8th and 12th centuries. The chief story is the Táin Bó Cúailnge (Cattle Raid of Cooley), about a battle between Queen Maeve of Connaught and Cúchulainn, the principal hero of Irish mythology. Cúchulainn appears in the work of Irish writers right up to the present day, from Samuel Beckett to Frank McCourt.
Contemporary Fiction
Brooklyn (Colm Tóibín)
The Thrill of it All (Joseph O'Connor)
Spill Simmer Falter Wither (Sara Baume)
The Glorious Heresies (Lisa McInerney)
The Gamal (Ciarán Collins)
Modern Literature
From the mythic cycle, zip forward 1000 years, past the genius of Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) and his Gulliver's Travels; stopping to acknowledge acclaimed dramatist Oscar Wilde (1854–1900); Dracula creator Bram Stoker (1847–1912) – some have claimed that the name of the count may have come from the Irish droch fhola (bad blood) – and the literary giant that was James Joyce (1882–1941), whose name and books elicit enormous pride in Ireland.
The majority of Joyce's literary output came when he had left Ireland for the artistic hotbed that was Paris, which was also true for another great experimenter of language and style, Samuel Beckett (1906–89). Beckett's work centres on fundamental existential questions about the human condition and the nature of self. He is probably best known for his play Waiting for Godot, but his unassailable reputation is based on a series of stark novels and plays.
Of the dozens of 20th-century Irish authors to have achieved published renown, some names to look out for include playwright and novelist Brendan Behan (1923–64), who wove tragedy, wit and a turbulent life into his best works including Borstal Boy, The Quare Fellow and The Hostage before dying young of alcoholism.
Belfast-born CS Lewis (1898–1963) died a year earlier, but he left us The Chronicles of Narnia, a series of allegorical children's stories, three of which have been made into films. Other Northern writers have, not surprisingly, featured the Troubles in their work: Bernard MacLaverty's Cal (also made into a film) and his more recent The Anatomy School are both wonderful.
The Gaelic Revival
While Home Rule was being debated and shunted, something of a revolution was taking place in Irish arts, literature and identity. The poet William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) and his coterie of literary friends (including Lady Gregory, Douglas Hyde, John Millington Synge and George Russell) championed the Anglo-Irish literary revival, unearthing old Celtic tales and writing with fresh enthusiasm about a romantic Ireland of epic battles and warrior queens. For a country that had suffered centuries of invasion and deprivation, these images presented a much more attractive version of history.
Contemporary Scene
‘I love James Joyce. Never read him, but he’s a true genius'. Yes, the stalwarts are still great, but ask your average Irish person who their favourite home-grown writer is and they’ll most likely mention someone who’s still alive.
They might say Roddy Doyle (1958–), whose mega-successful Barrytown trilogy The Commitments, The Snapper and The Van – have all been made into films; his latest book, The Guts (2013), saw the return of The Commitments protagonist, Jimmy Rabbitte older, wiser and battling illness. Doyle’s novel Paddy Clarke, Ha Ha Ha won the Booker Prize in 1993.
Sebastian Barry (1955–) has been shortlisted twice for the Man Booker Prize, for his WWI drama A Long Long Way (2005) and the absolutely compelling The Secret Scripture (2008), about a 100-year-old inmate of a mental hospital called Roseanne who decides to write an autobiography.
Anne Enright (1962–) did nab the Booker for The Gathering (2007), a zeitgeist tale of alcoholism and abuse – she described it as ‘the intellectual equivalent of a Hollywood weepie’. Her latest novel, The Green Road (2015), continues to mine the murky waters of the Irish family. Another Booker Prize winner is heavyweight John Banville (1945–), who won it for The Sea (2005); we also recommend either The Book of Evidence (1989) or the masterful roman-à-clef The Untouchable (1997), based loosely on the secret-agent life of art historian Anthony Blunt. Banville’s literary alter-ego is Benjamin Black, author of a series of seven hard-boiled detective thrillers set in the 1950s starring a troubled pathologist called Quirke – the latest book is Even the Dead (2015).
Another big hitter is Wexford-born Colm Tóibín (1955–), author of nine novels including Brooklyn (2009; made into a film in 2015 starring Saoirse Ronan) and, most recently, Nora Webster (2014), a powerful study of widowhood.
Emma Donoghue (1969–) followed the award-winning Room (2010) with Frog Music (2014), about the real-life shooting of cross-dressing gamine Jenny Bonnet in late-19th-century San Francisco and The Wonder, about a fasting child in 1850s Ireland. John Boyne (1971–) made his name with Holocaust novel The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (2006; the film version came out in 2008); his latest novel, A History of Loneliness (2014), explores the thorny issue of child abuse and the Catholic Church.
Colum McCann (1965–) left Ireland in 1986, eventually settling in New York, where his sixth novel, the post–September 11 Let the Great World Spin (2009), catapulted him to the top of the literary tree and won him the National Book Award for fiction as well as the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. His next novel, TransAtlantic (2013) weaves three separate stories together: the flight of Alcock and Brown, the visit of Frederick Douglass to Ireland in 1845 and the story of the Northern Irish peace process of the late 1990s.
The Troubles have been a rich and powerful subject for Northern Irish writers. Derry native Sean O’Reilly’s (1969–) novels are populated by characters freed from sectarianism but irreparably damaged by it: his last novel was Watermark (2005), about a young woman on the edge of desire and reason in an unnamed Irish town. Eoin McNamee (1961–) has written a series that explores the conflict directly, teasing out the effects of religion and history on the lives of individuals. His latest novel, Blue is the Night (2014) is the final book of a trilogy that also includes The Blue Tango (2001) and Orchid Blue (2010).
Paul Murray’s (1975–) second novel, Skippy Dies (2010), about a group of privileged students at an all-boys secondary school, won him lots of critical praise (and an upcoming movie version directed by Neil Jordan) but his follow-up, The Mark and the Void (2015), which is set against the backdrop of the financial crisis, met with far more lukewarm praise. Not so Shane Hegarty (1976–), who in 2015 published the first volume of Darkmouth, a YA novel set in a fictional Irish town where young Finn is learning about girls and fighting monsters.
Chick Lit
Authors hate the label and publishers profess to disregard it, but chick lit is big business, and few have mastered it as well as the Irish. Doyenne of them all is Maeve Binchy (1940–2012), whose mastery of the style saw her outsell most of the literary greats – her last novel before she died was A Week in Winter (2012). Marian Keyes (1963–) is another author with a long line of bestsellers, including The Woman Who Stole My Life (2014). She's a terrific storyteller with a rare ability to tackle sensitive issues such as alcoholism and depression, issues that she herself has suffered from and is admirably honest about. Former agony aunt Cathy Kelly turns out novels at the rate of one a year: her latest book is Between Sisters (2017), exploring the lives of two very different sisters.