The early 1990s saw Europes first conflict for almost 40 years when bitter fighting broke out in the former Yugoslav republic. Colonel Colm Doyle of the Irish Army found himself in the midst of this appalling civil war when in October 1991 he became first a European Community Monitor and almost immediately Head of the Monitor Mission in besieged Sarajevo. After six months he was appointed Personal Representative to Lord Carrington, Chairman of the Peace Conference on Yugoslavia.In this overdue memoir, he describes his role mediating, negotiating and persuading political and military leaders of all sides to halt the seemingly inexorable path to all-out war. He arranged ceasefires, visited prisoner-of-war camps, extricated election monitors and organised hostage releases. His experiences made him a key witness at the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague at the trials of Milosevic, Mladic and Karadzic.With his unprecedented access, Doyles personal account can claim to be one of the most significant works on the brutal Bosnian War.
Novelist and critic Colm Tóibín provides “a fascinating exploration of writers and their families” (Entertainment Weekly) and “an excellent guide through the dark terrain of unconscious desires” (The Evening Standard) in this brilliant collection of essays that explore the relationships of writers to their families and their work. Colm Tóibín—celebrated both for his award-winning fiction and his provocative book reviews and essays—traces the intriguing, often twisted family ties of writers in the books they leave behind. Through the relationship between W. B. Yeats and his father, Thomas Mann and his children, Jane Austen and her aunts, and Tennessee Williams and his sister, Tóibín examines a world of relations, richly comic or savage in their implications. Acutely perceptive and imbued with rare tenderness and wit, New Ways to Kill Your Mother is a fascinating look at writers’ most influential bonds and a secret key to understanding and enjoying their work.
The Sanskrit word mandala can be translated as "sacred circle." Within the circle sits a microcosm of the universe and/or consciousness, repre-sented by icons. Eastern civilizations developed the spiritual-artistic practice of creating mandalas—with sand, paint, and architecture—to high technical sophistication, making manifest a geometry with layers of esoteric meaning for both the mandala artist and the initiated spectator. James Joyce’s Mandala outlines and explains this iconic sacred geometry, and assesses to what extent Joyce’s works of literature, in particular Finnegans Wake, can be understood as mandalic constructs. Using exam-ples from Dubliners to the Wake, we see how fundamental to Joyce’s fiction is the issue of spiritual paralysis (a problem the mandala attempts to dissolve) and also how fascinated he was by geometric imagery and symmetry, the technical devices employed in mandala construction. This is the first book-length comparison of Joyce’s work with the mythic structure of the mandala. Never discounting the richness of Joyce’s genius, it uses his "collideorscape" to explore the secrets of the mandala principle as much as it uses mandala theory to illuminate his famed book of the night.
From bestselling and Booker-nominated author Colm Tóibín comes a beautiful collection of essays ranging from personal memoir to brilliantly acute writing on religion, literature and politics. From the melancholy and amusement within the work of the writer John McGahern to an extraordinary essay on his own cancer diagnosis, Tóibín delineates the bleakness and strangeness of life and also its richness and its complexity. As he reveals the shades of light and dark in a Venice without tourists and the streets of Buenos Aires riddled with disappearances, we find ourselves considering law and religion in Ireland as well as the intricacies of Marilynne Robinson's fiction.The imprint of the written word on the private self, as Tóibín himself remarks, is extraordinarily powerful. In this collection, that power is gloriously alive, illuminating history and literature, politics and power, family and the self.
Along with Mother Teresa and John Paul II, Padre Pio is one of the most beloved and inspirational figures for both Catholics and people of belief throughout the world. Now, in Padre Pio - The Scent of Roses, award-winning journalist Colm Keane, brings accounts of the saint's wonderful influence up to date. Using first-hand accounts of healing and recovery from illness, and through the stories of miracles and cures attributed to Padre Pio, this book provides new insights into the power and reach of the saint, who for fifty years bore the five wounds of Christ. The author retells personal stories of recovery from various cancers (including tumours and leukaemia), heart problems, depression, arthritis and multiple sclerosis and remarkable revivals from brain injuries, infections, accidents, kidney failure, blood clots and problems in childbirth. 'A remarkable book' - Brendan O'Connor, The Saturday Night Show, RTÉ One on We'll Meet Again 'A beautifully crafted book' - Sunday Independent on Going Home Colm Keane's writing on life, death and spirituality has touched readers in profound ways over many years and many of his books have been number one bestsellers. His latest, Padre Pio - The Scent of Roses is a deeply spiritual book on a much loved and revered saint.
From the internationally celebrated author of The Master, winner of the 2006 International Dublin Literary Award. Mothers and Sons is a deeply penetrating and beautifully written meditation on the dramas surrounding this most elemental of relationships. Each of the nine stories focuses on a moment in which an unspoken balance shifts; in which a mother or son do battle, or experience a sudden crisis, thus leaving their conception of who they are subtly or seriously altered. A son buries his mother and goes out to a drug-fuelled rave on a remote beach near Dublin. A mother sings about treacherous love to a rapt crowd of musicians in a local pub. And in “A Long Winter,” Colm Tóibín’s finest piece of fiction to date, a man goes searching for his mother in the snow-covered Pyrenees. Psychologically intricate and emotionally incisive, each finely wrought story teases out the delicate and difficult strands woven between mothers and sons. This is an acute, masterful, and moving collection that confirms Tóibín as a great prose stylist of our time.
Literary style is something many people talk about, but few could define. Yet it is crucial for our response to narrative art. Style can facilitate or obscure the events of a story or the motivations of a character, enhance the aesthetic appeal of a narrative or complicate its emotional impact, and even inflect the political or ethical implications of a work. It is precisely this complex operation of style that Patrick Colm Hogan explains in Style in Narrative. Drawing on recent psychological research, this book proposes a new and clear definition of style and provides a systematic theoretical account of style in relation to cognitive and affective science. Hogan's definition stresses that style varies by both scope, or the range of text or texts that may share a style, and level, the components of an individual work that might involve a shared style. The book uses rich examples from literature, film, and graphic fiction, including analysis of Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, Shakespeare's canon, William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, and Art Spiegelman's Maus, as well as visual analysis of films by Robert Rodriguez, Deepa Mehta, Eric Rohmer, M.F.Husain, Yasujiro Ozu, and Chuan Lu. Through these studies Hogan identifies stylistic concerns common across mediums as well as the most consequential stylistic differences between them. Bringing together three often separated mediums within a coherent framework, Style in Narrative makes an important contribution to and necessary intervention in the field of stylistics.
Struggling with grief and financial hardships after the death of her beloved husband, widow Nora struggles to support her four children and clings to secrecy in the intrusive community of her childhood before finding her voice. By the award-winning author of The Master and Brooklyn
Untangle the financial history of Charlie Haughey, Taoiseach and leader of Fianna Fáil, in Haughey's Millions, the must-read, bestselling exposé of one of Ireland's most controversial politicians Colm Keena, acclaimed Irish Times investigative journalist, examines the extraordinary career of Charlie 'the Boss' Haughey, the backbench TD who became Taoiseach (Prime Minister) and left a financial legacy that lingered long after his retirement from political life. As a politician, Haughey made a huge contribution to Irish life: he played a key role in the Northern Ireland peace process and he laid the foundations for the prosperity that arrived with the Celtic Tiger. But Haughey's Millions does not deal with Haughey's political history; instead Keena uncovers the subject that Haughey most wanted to avoid and you'll most want to read: the truth about his money. From elections to tribunal appearances, Haughey dominated the Irish political landscape from the '60s to the '90s and always lived visibly beyond his means. From his princely accommodation in Kinsealy to his penchant for horses, Haughey's extravagant spending made him look like a rich man on a TD's salary. In Haughey's Millions, Keena traces the origins of Haughey's lavish lifestyle back to the '50s and to his early life as a partner in Haughey, Boland & Co. Moving chronologically forward, Keena looks at Haughey's early involvement with Des Traynor and his developing relationships with property developers and other key entrepreneurs and business figures. Keena's investigations take him up to the Moriarty and McCracken tribunals of the mid-'90s, set up to investigate the alleged financial corruption at the heart of Haughey's infamous political reign. Under the microscope of Keena's investigations, Haughey's financial dealings are revealed. In Haughey's Millions, Keena gives you the whole tangled story of a politician who lived like a prince, from beginning to ignominious end. Haughey's Millions: Table of Contents Introduction Part One: 1925–1987 - A Descendant of Kings - The Tax Commissioner's Residence - The Wilderness Years - Banking Secrets - Horse Dealers and Hoteliers - Helping Ciarán Part Two: 1987–1992 - Back in Business - Tralee Again - A New Disciple - Money for the Boss - Brian Lenihan - Financial Services - Taxing the Taoiseach Part Three: 1992– - Bowing Out Gracefully - Helicopters Again - An Innocent Bystander - Disclosure - Endgame - The Case for the Defence
In 1922 the fledgling Irish Free State decided to replace the RIC with the Civic Guard (An Garda Síochána). This new Irish police force found itself dealing with an unsettled population, many of whom were suspicions of law and order after centuries of forceful policing by the British. It was decided that the Gardaí would uphold the law with the consent of the people however, and that they would remain unarmed. This brave decision may have been popular with ordinary Irishmen and women, but it left members of the force vulnerable to attack and even murder. Many Gardaí met their death in the first decades of the Irish State. This is their story.
Colm Tóibín’s New York Times bestselling novel—also an acclaimed film starring Saoirse Ronan and Jim Broadbent nominated for four Academy Awards including Best Picture—is “a moving, deeply satisfying read” (Entertainment Weekly) about a young Irish immigrant in Brooklyn in the early 1950s. “One of the most unforgettable characters in contemporary literature” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette), Eilis Lacey has come of age in small-town Ireland in the hard years following World War Two. When an Irish priest from Brooklyn offers to sponsor Eilis in America, she decides she must go, leaving her fragile mother and her charismatic sister behind. Eilis finds work in a department store on Fulton Street, and when she least expects it, finds love. Tony, who loves the Dodgers and his big Italian family, slowly wins her over with patient charm. But just as Eilis begins to fall in love, devastating news from Ireland threatens the promise of her future. Author “Colm Tóibín…is his generation’s most gifted writer of love’s complicated, contradictory power” (Los Angeles Times). “Written with mesmerizing power and skill” (The Boston Globe), Brooklyn is a “triumph…One of those magically quiet novels that sneak up on readers and capture their imaginations” (USA TODAY).
Now unknown or forgotten, influential schoolmasters took the game of association football to many parts of England. They had several roles: they brought the game to individual schools, they established regional and national leagues and associations, and they founded professional football clubs. They also exported the game around the world, working as moral missionaries, passionate players and energetic entrepreneurs. The role of teachers in association football is a much neglected aspect of English cultural history. It is a story that deserves to be told because it allows a fundamental reappraisal of the status and position of these teachers in late nineteenth century and early twentieth century society. This volume was previously published as a special issue of the journal Soccer and Society.
For Colm Toíbín and Carmen Callil there is no difference between literary and commercial writing - there is only the good novel: engrossing, inspirational, compelling. In their selection of the best 200 novels written since 1950, the editors make a case for the best and the best-loved works and argue why each should be considered a modern classic. Enlightening, often unexpected and always engaging this tour through the world of fiction is full of surprises, forgotten masterpieces and a valuable guide to what to read next. Authors in the collection include Agatha Christie, Georgette Heyer, Daphne du Maurier, Patrick Hamilton, Carson McCullers, J. D. Salinger, Bernard Malamud; Flannery O'Connor, Mulk Raj Anand, Raymond Chandler, L. P. Hartley, Amos Tutuola, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Samuel Beckett, Patricia Highsmith, Chinua Achebe, Isak Dineson, Alan Sillitoe, Ivy Compton-Burnett, Grace Paley, Harper Lee, Olivia Manning and Mordecai Richler.
Colm Tóibín’s “lovely, understated” novel that “proceeds with stately grace” (The Washington Post Book World) about an uncompromising judge whose principles, when brought home to his own family, are tragic. Eamon Redmond is a judge in Ireland’s high court, a completely legal creature who is just beginning to discover how painfully unconnected he is from other human beings. With effortless fluency, Colm Tóibín reconstructs the history of Eamon’s relationships—with his father, his first “girl,” his wife, and the children who barely know him—and he writes about Eamon’s affection for the Irish coast with such painterly skill that the land itself becomes a character. The result is a novel of stunning power, “seductive and absorbing” (USA Today).
The greatest Gaelic footballer of all time.' Pat Spillane When Colm Cooper retired from inter-county football in 2017, he left behind a remarkable legacy. The holder of five All-Ireland medals and eight All-Stars, he was Kerry’s stand-out forward for fifteen years. From a family steeped in Gaelic football, and a core member of the Dr Crokes team, Colm was still in his teens when he first played for Kerry at senior level. Overcoming struggles with injury and personal tragedy, Cooper became one of the GAA’s most recognizable and best-loved figures at a time of tumultuous change in the game. But the man known nationally as ‘Gooch’ is also an intensely private figure who has never courted publicity and his personal story remains largely untold. Now Gooch – The Autobiography unlocks a previously unopened door, tracing a compelling path through the life beyond the headlines. This is the story of an ordinary man who became an extraordinary footballer.
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