Olga Tokarczuk’s The Books of Jacob
In a quiet room, two men smoke hashish and discuss the inevitability of the Apocalypse.…
Browsing: culture
A Fairy Tale of Dún Laoghaire 2
I knew the game was up when my mother told me that Santy had given…
The Empty Unconscious
Banality is the byword of mass consumerism There’s a piece of public art that for…
Ciarán O’Rourke: Breaking the Cycle
One Big Union is a self-published collection of essays by Irish poet Ciarán O’Rourke. The…
Review: Richard Kearney’s Touch
Touch: Recovering Our Most Vital Sense is a recently published work by Irish philosopher and…
Towards the Brink of the Cataract
Unaware of the roaring cataract ahead, a small boy splashes in the dark river named…
Jack B. Yeats: Painting and Memory
Often overshadowed by his elder, Nobel laureate, brother W.B., Jack Butler Yeats occupies an exalted…
David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest
I have a mild neurosis, situated in Utopian wish-fulfillment, of the ideal that I often…
Where is Sally Rooney’s Beautiful World?
For Christmas two years ago, my mother bought me a copy of Sally Rooney’s novel…
Love and Literature in Numbers
Whenever I think about Literature I think about Love. Both are written with big Ls.…
Cuban Love Songs Launch
In a rousing introductory speech, retired diplomat Philip McDonagh described the publication of Cuban Love…
Ireland: The Lipsticked Pig
On February 15th, 2021, John Buckley McQuaid, released an album of original songs about Ireland,…
Shakespeare’s Wisdom in Troubled Times
As a barrister I am given to quoting from Shakespeare’s plays in closing speeches. This…
Review: Strumpet City
Picture the scene: the small backyard of a tiny working-class pub in Belfast at around…
Literature: Ireland’s Last Minotaur
In Ireland, North and South, the Arts Sector, currently, is a sinecure. Those middle-class mentalities…
A Grá for the Language
An grá is an gráin, say these two words out loud, say them out loud…
Fleeing Father
If stylistically Francesca Banciu’s latest novel translated into English Fleeing Father (Vatherflucht) is a much…
Czech Intellectuals: Kafka and Kundera
I was briefly a Professor of Law and International Relations at the Anglo-American University in…
The Literary ‘Outsider’ Novel
Does an age of frenetic online activity afford time for literary masterpieces, especially Outsider Novels,…
Our Barmy Bread
The appeal of exotic cuisines and esoteric diets has done little to diminish bread’s status…