Tales and Imaginings 1965-1998

From the two volumes of Stones of Aran to the essays collected in Setting Foot on the Shores of Connemara and My Time in Space, Tim Robinson has established himself as one of the great non-fiction writers at work in the English language. In light of this, Tales and Imaginings, a collection of imaginative writings from five decades, might seem a profound departure, but to read it is to encounter anew the integrity and connectedness of Robinson's body of work. In the earliest stories gathered here, we recognize their author as the young Robinson, doing National Service in Malaya, whom we encountered in two searching autobiographical essays from My Time in Space; reading the most recent piece, 'Three Notes on the Elgin Marbles', we are reminded of Robinson's essay on his work as a visual artist and its examination of the role of the museum. In between are stories and imaginative essays that engage in unexpected ways with the West of Ireland landscapes Robinson has described so memorably in his previous books. Most of these pieces straddle recognizable genres; for example 'Orion the Hunter', which can easily be read as fiction, was selected for The Best American Essays 1998. Tim Robinson's non-fiction writings brilliantly transcend established disciplines and styles, and he has always shown himself to be an imaginative writer of the calibre of Borges and of Sebald. Tales and Imaginings confirms that achievement. TIM ROBINSON was born in England in 1935. Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage, published in 1985, won the Irish Book Award Literature Medal and a Rooney Prize Special Award for Literature in 1987. Stones of Aran: Labyrinth appeared in 1995, and Setting Foot on the Shores of Connemara was published in 1996. My Time in Space was published in 2001.