Dermot Bolger

Seven of Ireland's most acclaimed writers, including Roddy Doyle, Colm Toibin, and Joseph O'Connor, join talents to recount the last wild and disreputable night of a once proud Dublin hotel that has definitely seen much better times

Finbar's Hotel

Over the past 20 years, an explosion of contemporary Irish writing has forced its way onto the literary scene. This book contains Irish fiction published since 1968, arranged in the chronological order of the period in which the work is set.

The New Picador Book of Contemporary Irish Fiction

This novel evokes the traditions and history of rural Ireland and the contrasting contemporary life in Dublin and London.

Father's Music

Wexford Through Its Writers

Restored to life - to a miraculous second chance at life - Sean experiences the numbed, haunted sensation of not knowing who he is. He realises that until he searches out and unlocks the past, he will be a stranger to his wife, his children, and to himself.

A Renewed Novel

A Second Life

Young Francis Hanrahan dreams desperately of a life different from that of his country-born, suburban-living parents. On his first day at his first job Francis makes his first real friend. Shay, a would-be older brother, introduces “Hano” to Dublin's appealingly seedy after-hours bars and drug-fueled parties. They are joined by Cait, a troubled teenager who spends her days in a stupor. But the noir thrills of underground Dublin cannot conceal the unemployment, corruption, and violence strangling the city. The Plunkett brothers, masters of “the subtle everyday corruption on which a dynasty was built” will use the friends—with tragic results. Torn between his friends, his family, and his own ideals, Hano ultimately falls victim to these powerful forces and commits a heinous crime. He flees through the countryside with Cait, wondering, as he narrates the events that set him on this path, if there is a home at the end of it. Controversial for its gritty portrait of Dublin in the 1980s, The Journey Home is Dermot Bolger's unflinching look at the personal cost of social progress, and those, innocent or not, lost during the journey.

The Journey Home

Bolger's spellbinding novel is based on a real-life rescue in 1943, when the MV Kerlogue's crew risked their lives to save 168 drowning German sailors. The story is seen through the eyes of Jack, a boy who followed his father to sea, and finds himself rescuing the men who killed his dad. This is a brilliant portrayal of the unarmed Irish ships that sailed alone through hazardous waters, of young romance, and of a boy encountering a world where every experience is intense and dangerous.

The Lonely Sea and Sky

While a floundering Irish government clings to its illusion of power and an international troika waits in the wings, Martin - a mid-ranking civil servant - finds himself alone in a Beijing hotel: a superfluous accessory in a delegation accompanying a Minister to China..

A Novella

The Fall of Ireland

The current state of theatre in Ireland has never been better. A relatively young playwright, Marina Carr, was recently chosen by a select committee in Ireland as one of Ireland's ten best living writers, along with two other dramatists, Brian Friel and Tom Murphy. Add these to the names of other fine dramatists such as Martin McDonagh, Thomas Kilroy, John B. Keane, Hugh Leonard, Eugene McCabe, and Jim Nolan, and it's clear to see that the state of Irish theatre today is strong. This collection of essays is a unique exploration of this topic. With contributions from seventeen of Ireland's leading cultural critics and authorities on theatre, this is one of the most important books to be published on Irish theatre for years. Included are pieces by Colm Toibin on Billy Roche; John Waters on Martin McDonagh; Ben Barnes on the Abbey; pieces on Irish theatre in the North, New York, and France; Donal O'Kelly; Irish women playwrights; Brian Friel; and Irish language theatre.

The Changing Face of Irish Theatre

Druids, Dudes, and Beauty Queens

'Each story stands alone but also makes up the vivid picture of life in Dublin's newly refurbished Finbar's Hotel . . . funny and poignant' Sunday Mirror 'Finbar's Hotel is back, this time with a stellar cast of women writers and a lick of paint . . . But what's it all about? Well, it would be all too easy to give the game away, so let's just say that there's a hilarious reworking of the old immaculate conception theme, a bittersweet confrontation between a daughter and her loopy father, a poignant encounter involving a long-married couple, and a cracking finish . . . it doesn't matter who wrote what: together they've produced a playful, light, highly entertaining book' Irish Times 'Beneath the humour, whimsy and outright craziness, Ladies' Night at Finbar's Hotel hits at the shallowness of current social pretensions and offers a cautious optimism about women's lives today' Times Literary Supplement

Ladies' Night at Finbar's Hotel

Finbar's Hotel & Ladies Night at Finbar's Hotel in Slip Case

New Town Soul is a supernatural thriller in a very real world OCo it is about the freedom of being young and the enslavement of being immortal. "

New Town Soul

Emily's Shoes

Collects forty-six contemporary Irish short stories featuring contributions by notables including Mary Leland, William Trevor, Mary Dorcey, Patrick McCabe, and Brian Moore.

The Vintage Book of Contemporary Irish Fiction

Roman fra Dublin om den 18-årige Donal Flynn, som presses ind i ægteskab og et fabriksarbejde, da hans veninde bliver gravid.

Night Shift

Written by a master story-teller, Tanglewood grows into an incisive dissection of Ireland in 2007, when - although these characters are unaware of it - the Celtic Tiger edifice is quietly imploding.

Tanglewood

A stunning historical saga set in the early decades of the twentieth century which follows the lives and loves of one extraordinary family.

The Family on Paradise Pier

There is one thing you must never lose sight of. No matter what life deals you, promise me that you will strive tooth and nail for the right to be happy.Having surrendered her happiness to raise her children, Eva Fitzgerald defies convention in 1950s Ireland by leaving a failed marriage to embark on an extraordinary journey of self-discovery. It takes her from teeming Moroccan streets and being flour-bombed in radical marches in London to living in old age in a caravan that becomes an ark for all those whom she befriends amid the fields of Mayo.An indefatigable idealist, Eva strives to forge her identity while entangled in the fault-lines of her children’s unravelling lives. An Ark of Light is a devastating portrayal of a mother’s anxiety for her gay son in a world where homosexuality is illegal and explores a terse relationship between a mother and daughter with nothing in common beyond love.Remarkably affecting and gorgeously rendered, this standalone novel completes the real-life story of the unforgettable heroine of Bolger’s bestselling novel, The Family on Paradise Pier, in following a free spirit trying to hold her family together while striving to be happy. This struggle is often heartbreakingly lost, but Eva never loses her indomitable spirit. A towering achievement by one of Ireland’s best-loved authors about the unshakeable bonds of family, the indestructability of love and the price a woman pays for the right to be herself.

An Ark of Light

James Joyce

Absurd, brilliant and profound, the Abbey Theatre’s production of Dermot Bolger’s adaptation of Joyce’s masterpiece is Ulysses as you never imagined it before: a superbly theatrical homage to Joyce’s chronicle of Dublin life and the greatest novel of all time. With his wife Molly waiting in bed for the nefarious Blazes Boylan, Leopold Bloom traverses Dublin, conversing in pubs, graveyards and brothels, enduring ridicule and prejudice as he steadfastly clings to his principles and subtly slays his dragons while drawing ever closer to his fateful encounter with the young Stephen Dedalus. As directed by Graham McLaren, Bloom’s odyssey is a pandemonium of live music, puppets and clowning; a production that, in the words of The Arts Review, “throws its arms wide open and bids everyone welcome”. Ulysses is bawdy, hilarious and affecting in celebrating Joyce’s genius for depicting everyday life in all its profundity, with The Sunday Herald remarking that “Dermot Bolger’s beautifully crafted adaptation (carefully and coherently selected from the fiction) has a palpable love for the sensuousness and abundance of Joyce’s language.”

Dermot Bolger

About

Books

Join the club