Colm Tóibín

'Short stories to astonish and delight' Financial Times In The News from Dublin, a beautiful collection of short stories from the bestselling author of Brooklyn and Long Island, Colm Tóibín delves into the days and nights of those living far from home: lives of great longing, at a great distance from past lives and past selves. A woman in Galway hears of the death of her son in the First World War. An Irishman seeks anonymity in Barcelona, haunted by crimes he has committed. A man goes to Dublin from Enniscorthy to implore the Minister for Health for a special favour. A young woman is pregnant during the Spanish Civil War. An undocumented worker finds himself living an illegal life and must leave San Francisco, and his child, after thirty years in America. Three sisters who have been living in Argentina decide to return to Catalonia. 'Tóibín is the consummate cartographer of the private self, summoning with restrained acuity (and a delicious streak of sly humour) the thoughts his characters struggle to find words for' – Clare Clark, Guardian

short stories from the bestselling author of Brooklyn and Long Island

The News from Dublin

Amit Chaudhuri

Ten-year-old Sandeep lives in a high-rise in Bombay, where his father has an important job that keeps him busy all the time. Come summer, Sandeep and his mother travel to Calcutta to spend time with his aunt, his self-absorbed and improvident uncle, and Abhi, his favorite cousin. His relatives’ house is shadowy and rambling; the vast city around it ramshackle and alluring. They fascinate curious, observant Sandeep. Days pass; the heat grows; the rains come; the visit ends. In the winter, Sandeep and his family return to Calcutta—and encounter an unexpected turn of events. But Sandeep has arrived at a new sense of things, an understanding of how the marvelous inheres in the mundane, that will be his, we feel, for good. 

At once delicate and incisive, A Strange and Sublime Address succeeds in both immersing us in a boy’s inner world and depicting that boy and his world from outside. It was Amit Chaudhuri’s first book, the work of a novelist whose striking originality of conception would subsequently become ever more clear. The three decades since the publication of A Strange and Sublime Address have only confirmed its appeal and poetry.

A Strange and Sublime Address

A Walk Along the Irish Border

Bad Blood

Acclaimed Irish novelist Colm Tóibín first read James Baldwin just after turning eighteen. He had completed his first year at an Irish university and was struggling to free himself from a religious upbringing. He had even considered entering a seminary and was searching for literature that would offer illumination and insight. Inspired by the novel Go Tell It on the Mountain, Tóibín found a writer who would be a lifelong companion and exemplar.  

From On James Baldwin

Baldwin was interested in the hidden and dramatic areas in his own being, and was prepared as a writer to explore difficult truths about his own private life. In his fiction, he had to battle for the right of his protagonists to choose or influence their destinies. He knew about guilt and rage and bitter privacies in a way that few of his White novelist contemporaries did. And this was not simply because he was Black and homosexual; the difference arose from the very nature of his talent, from the texture of his sensibility. “All art,” he wrote, “is a kind of confession, more or less oblique. All artists, if they are to survive, are forced, at last, to tell the whole story, to vomit the anguish up.”

On James Baldwin is a magnificent contemporary author’s tribute to one of his most consequential literary progenitors.

On James Baldwin

Dave Eggers

Michael Chabon

Ayelet Waldman

Colum McCann

Writers Confront the Occupation

Kingdom of Olives and Ash

stories

The empty family

House of Names

Travels in Catholic Europe (Vintage Departures)

The Sign of the Cross

Summer of ’38

With AIDS about to claim a well-loved young man, three generations of his family are reunited at his bedside in Ireland, in a novel that explores the nature of love and the complex interrelationships among family members.

A Novel

The Blackwater Lightship

The Master

A Guest at the Feast

Magician

Meryem'in Tanikligi

Güney

Brooklyn

In The News from Dublin, a beautiful collection of short stories from the bestselling author of Brooklyn and Long Island, Colm Tóibín delves into the days and nights of those living far from home. A woman in Galway hears of the death of her son in the First World War. An Irishman seeks anonymity in Barcelona, haunted by crimes he has committed. A man goes to Dublin from Enniscorthy to implore the Minister for Health for a special favour. A young woman is pregnant during the Spanish Civil War. An undocumented worker finds himself living an illegal life and must leave San Francisco, and his child, after thirty years in America. Three sisters who have been living in Argentina decide to return to Catalonia. 'Tóibín is the consummate cartographer of the private self, summoning with restrained acuity (and a delicious streak of sly humour) the thoughts his characters struggle to find words for' - Clare Clark, Guardian

An anthology of Irish fiction, from Gulliver's Travels to the current younger generation of Irish writers. It includes sections from novels, with an introduction explaining the context, as well as short stories. Work is chosen on literary merit rather than the light it throws on Irish history or politics. The way writers use form and language is the central concern.

The Penguin Book of Irish Fiction

A Long Winter

Colm Tóibín

Books

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