Colm Tóibín

"Since the 1920s Finbar's Hotel has stood proudly on Dublins quays, but its glory days have long since passed it by. Now it is about to be torn down, but not until an astonishing array of guests - a barman on the make, a paranoid art thief stalking its corridors, a grieving woman who dreams of red-haired men, a desperate middle-aged man out for a wild fling - pass through for one last night. From room to room, and from tale to tale, Ireland's most famous storytellers take us through the extraordinary old building in a dazzling spin on Irish humor and drama at its best."--BOOK JACKET.

Widely regarded as one of the greatest ever sportspeople, Roger Federer is a global phenomenon. From his humble beginnings as a temperamental teenager to becoming symbol of enduring greatness, 'The Master' is the definitive biography of a global icon who is both beloved and yet intensely private. Federer earned more endorsements in 2020 than any other athlete in the world ($106.3 million).

Bacon (1909-92) was raised in large country houses in rural Ireland by a family whose conventional expectations he rebelled against early on. As a young man he was introduced to the seamy side of life in London and Paris; but only after seeing a Picasso retrospective in 1928 did he become an artist. He sprang into prominence in 1944 with a triptych which shocked the art world with its sheer ferocity, and he soon emerged, with his friend Lucian Freud, as a leader of an informal "School of London," which favored figurative painting in an age dominated by abstraction. As retrospectives of Bacon's work in Paris, London, and New York made his reputation soar, his nighttime exploits grew wilder and wilder; charming and confident, with a strong sadomasochistic streak, he was drawn to "rough trade" in London clubs and pushed all situations to the edge. At the same time, he was a deeply cultivated and thoughtful artist who was obsessively guarded about the sources of his inspiration. Michael Peppiatt has unlocked many of the enigmas of Bacon's life and work. Bacon talked openly to Peppiatt about his early life, his sexuality, his fantasies, and his ambitions, aware that all was being recorded for publication. At the suggestion that some of his remarks would sound indiscreet, Bacon replied: "The more indiscreet, the more interesting it will be." Together with many new facts, unpublished documents, and penetrating analyses of key paintings, these conversations have been integrated into what is the most complete and riveting account of one of the greatest artists of our time.

"The year 2012 marks the centenary of the foundering of the R.M.S. Titanic in the Atlantic ocean, a disaster in which over 1500 lives were lost. 'Albert, Ernest & the Titanic' tells the story of the ship's ill-fated on board printers, Abraham 'Albert' Mishellany and Ernest Corbin as they travel on the ship's doomed maiden voyage....The book has been letterpress printed at Distillers Press, NCAD, Dublin, Ireland. All the text has been set by hand. The book runs to 176 pages with 40 linocut illustrations. A unique adhesive-less binding has been designed for the book and it has been hand bound in a limited edition of 36 copies."--Information from publisher's website.

Widowed in her forties, with four children and not enough money, Nora has lost the love of her life, Maurice, the man who rescued her from the stifling world to which she was born. And now she fears she may be drawn back into it. Wounded, strong-willed, clinging to secrecy in a tiny community where everyone knows your business, Nora is drowning in her own sorrow and blind to the suffering of her young sons, who have lost their father. Yet she has moments of stunning empathy and kindness, and when she begins to sing again, after decades, she finds solace, engagement, a haven-- herself.

From the thrilling imagination of bestselling, award-winning Colm Toibin comes a retelling of the story of Clytemnestra's spectacularly audacious, violent, vengeful, lustful, and instantly compelling and her children ... In House of Names, Colm Toibin brings a modern sensibility and language to an ancient classic, and gives this extraordinary character new life, so that we not only believe Clytemnestra's thirst for revenge, but applaud it. He brilliantly inhabits the mind of one of Greek myth's most powerful villains to reveal the love, lust, and pain she feels. Told in fours parts, this is a fiercely dramatic portrait of a murderess, who will herself be murdered by her own son, Orestes. It is Orestes' story, too: his capture by the forces of his mother's lover Aegisthus, his escape and his exile. And it is the story of the vengeful Electra, who watches over her mother and Aegisthus with cold anger and slow calculation, until, on the return of her brother, she has the fates of both of them in her hands.

"The Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s has been popularly perceived as a genocide attributable to the British government. In professional historical circles, however, such singular thinking was dismissed many years ago, as evidenced by the scathing academic response to Cecil Woodham-Smith's 1963 classic, The Great Hunger, which, in addition to presenting a vivid and horrifying picture of the human suffering, made strong accusations against the British government's failure to act." "And while British governmental sins of omission and commission during the famine played their part, there is a broader context of land agitation and regional influences of class conflict within Ireland that also contributed to the starvation of more than a million people." "This book opens a door to understanding all sides of this tragedy with an absorbing history provided by novelist Colm Toibin that is supported by a collection of key documents selected by historian Diarmaid Ferriter. An important piece of revisionist thinking, The Irish Famine: A Documentary is sure to become the classic primer for this lamentable period of Irish history."--Jacket.

"This book presents a unique effort to create a new understanding of the Christian sign of the cross. At its core, it traces the conscious and unconscious influence of this visual symbol through time. What began as the crucifixion of a Jewish troublemaker in Roman-occupied Judea in the first century eventually gave rise to a broad spectrum of readings of the instrument used to accomplish such a punishment, a cross. The author argues that Jesus was a provocative, grandiose masochist whose suffering and death initially signified redemption for believers. This idea gradually morphed into a Christian sense of freedom to persecute and wage war against non-believers, however, as can be seen in the Crusades ("wars of the cross"). Many believers even construed the murder of their savior as a crime perpetrated by "the Jews," and this paranoid notion culminated in the mass murder of European Jews under the sign of the Nazi hooked cross (Hakenkreuz). Rancour-Laferriere's book is expertly written and argued; it will be readable to a large audience because it touches on many areas of controversy, interest, and scholarship. The work is critical, but not unfair; it employs psychoanalysis, art history (the study of the symbol of the cross in works of art), religion and religious texts, and world history generally. The interweaving of these various themes is what gives this work its ability to draw in readers-and will ultimately be what keeps the reader interested through the conclusion."--Provided by publisher.

"British artist Peter Liversidge’s (born 1973) diverse oeuvre begins with typewritten proposals through which he explores many media. Using a hand held camera, Liversidge takes two images--the initial selected image guides the composition of the second image, taken moments after the first is developed.

In his essay on the "Notebooks of Tennessee Williams", Colm Toibin reveals an artist 'alone and deeply fearful and unusually selfish' and one profoundly tormented by his sister's mental illness. Through the relationship between W.B. Yeats and his father or Thomas Mann and his children or J.M. Synge and his mother, Toibin examines a world of family relations, richly comic or savage in its implications. In Roddy Doyle's writing on his parents we see an Ireland reinvented. From the dreams and nightmares of John Cheever's journals Toibin makes flesh this darkly comic misanthrope and his relationship to his wife and his children. 'Educating an intellectual woman', Cheever remarked, 'is like letting a rattlesnake into the house'. In pieces that range from the importance of aunts (and the death of parents) in the English nineteenth-century novel to the relationship between fathers and sons in the writing of James Baldwin and Barack Obama, Colm Toibin illuminates not only the intimate connections between writers and their families but also articulates, with a rare tenderness and wit, the great joy of reading their work.

"Over the past twenty years Paul Durcan has become an essential presence in Irish life. His poems have ranged from risk-taking explorations along the tragi-comic fault lines in contemporary Ireland to brave and painful studies of the private self." "Taking its title from one of his most famous poems, The Kilfenora Teaboy is the first full-length study of Paul Durcan's work. It includes an analysis of his relationship with the political world be inhabits, a study of the connection between his own background and poetic vision, and critical evaluation of the essential themes which underpin his extraordinary body of work."--Jacket.

"In this book, novelist Colm Tóibín offers a deeply personal introduction to the work and life of one of his most important literary influences--the American poet Elizabeth Bishop. Ranging across her poetry, prose, letters, and biography, Tóibín creates a vivid picture of Bishop while also revealing how her work has helped shape his sensibility as a novelist and how her experiences of loss and exile resonate with his own. What emerges is a compelling double portrait that will intrigue readers interested in both Bishop and Tóibín"--