Modern Irish Classics
For more information, or to buy the book or read an extract, click on the titles below.
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A Second LifeWritten by Dermot Bolger.A new series from New Island, putting twentieth-century Irish classics back on the shelves for a new readership. The first of the series includes acclaimed and well-loved authors Benedict Kiely, Anthony Cronin and Dermot Bolger. Following a car crash, for several seconds, Dublin photographer Sean Blake is clinically dead. When he plummets back to life, it is into a world which, for him, has profoundly changed. This is not the first time that he has been given a second life. At the age of six weeks he was taken from his mother, when as a young girl in rural Ireland, she was forced to give up her baby for adoption. Beginning the quest for his own identity, Sean determines to find his natural mother. This leads him on a strange and absorbing journey. |
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Happiness And Other StoriesWritten by Mary Lavin.Last published over four decades ago, Happiness is perhaps the most cherished of all the acclaimed collections by Mary Lavin who was not just one of Ireland’s major writers, but ranked among the greatest short story writers of the twentieth century in the English language. From the title story, which echoes her own experience as a widow with three young daughters, the stories in this classic collection explore the relationships and intimate emotions of her characters that are from a vanished Ireland but still resonate with vivid brilliance. • A new release in the Modern Irish Classics series; • Series 4 includes authors such as Ferdia Mac Anna and Walter Macken |
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The BogmanWritten by Walter Macken.Orphaned at a young age, Cahal Kinsella returns from an orphanage in Clifden, County Galway, to the small farming village of Caherlo and his tyrannical grandfather. He must assert his individuality if he is to have any hope of freedom from his misery. Walter Macken paints a memorable portrait of the hard life of subsistence farming, of loveless arranged marriages, and of rebellion against suffocating social mores. Originally published in 1994, New Island’s Modern Irish Classics series brings this memorable book back to life. • A new release in Modern Irish Classics; • The series also includes acclaimed authors such as Ferdia Mac Anna and Mary Lavin. |
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The Cards of The GamblerWritten by Benedict Kiely.p>A new series from New Island, putting twentieth-century Irish classics back on the shelves for a new readership. The first of the series includes acclaimed and well-loved authors Benedict Kiely, Anthony Cronin and Dermot Bolger.</p><p>This classic novel from renowned novelist, short-story writer and broadcaster Benedict Kiely follows the trials of a doctor who becomes a gambler and loses everything.</p> |
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The Last of the High KingsWritten by Ferdia Mac Anna.Set during the summer of Punk in Howth, a small fishing town in North County Dublin, The Last of the High Kings is a coming-of-age comic novel that tells the story of 17 year old Frankie Griffin as he tries to deal with his eccentric family, including his outrageous Republican mother and laid-back Bohemian father. First published in 1991, New Island bring this Modern Irish Classic back to life. The Last of the High Kings was made into a Hollywood movie starring Gabriel Byrne, Stephen Rea and Christina Ricci in 1996. ‘Ferdia Mac Anna has that gift so rare: the ability to write humour. And in this, his first novel, he turns it to good advantage … a perceptive, funny and often quite touching novel’ Irish Independent • Another addition to the Modern Irish Classics; • The Irish Classics series includes acclaimed authors such as Walter Macken and Mary Lavin. |