To watch Hilary Mantel go to work on the world is one of contemporary literature’s unalloyed pleasures.
Kevin Power Criticism 10th February 2021
Derek Mahon's collection is the culmination of a life dedicated to language, the final word from an extraordinary talent.
Tara McEvoy Criticism 21st January 2021
Doireann Ní Ghríofa's 'exhilarating' prose debut investigates the inherited script of motherhood and the occluded history of Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonnaill.
Emma Flynn Criticism 25th November 2020
In her latest exploration of racial imaginaries in the US, Claudia Rankine stresses the importance of difficult conversations in the face of racist state violence.
Mary Jean Chan Criticism 10th November 2020
Caitlín Doherty follows some mystical threads through recent occult-inspired poetry and publishing.
Caitlín Doherty Criticism 30th October 2020
Emma Cline's exquisitely detailed work of social observation falls back on familiar tropes, allowing some characters more complexity than others.
Zakia Uddin Criticism 23rd October 2020
Robert Kiely's debut collection is a brilliant and urgently contemporary appeal to the reader.
Lily Ní Dhomhnaill Criticism 9th September 2020
Mieko Kawakami's latest is a novel of uncertainty, absence, and bodily obsession.
Clara Kumagai Criticism 27th August 2020
Nathalie Legér's blend of novel, art history and memoir is a study in 'to-be-looked-at-ness'.
Rachel Andrews Criticism 12th August 2020
Tara McEvoy considers joy and formal constraint in Alice Lyons' 'extraordinary' debut novel.
Tara McEvoy Criticism 23rd July 2020
Emily S. Cooper finds a quiet beauty in Kathryn Scanlan's spare, unflinching stories.
Emily Cooper Criticism 30th June 2020
Adania Shibli's third novel, translated by Elisabeth Jaquette, considers the implications of historiography under occupation.
Sarah Jilani Criticism 11th June 2020
Golnoosh Nour's short story collection is an 'inescapably political' exploration of queerness and national identity.
Caleb Klaces' experimental blend of poetry and prose describes the state of new fatherhood with a radical note of tenderness.
Xenobe Purvis Criticism 27th April 2020
Lars Iyer's latest philosophical novel is a “paean to those languorous summer afternoons, on the cusp of adulthood, when time stretches to eternity.”
Andrew Gallix Criticism 9th April 2020
Oisín Fagan's first novel is at once shocking, sad and wise; a book which looks boldly at the mysteries of life, and leaves them beautifully intact
David O'Connor Criticism 19th March 2020
Anne Enright's seventh novel is 'an intricate portrait of the artist as a woman, and an incisive commentary on her "role" in the early Irish republic.'
Dr Dawn Miranda Sherratt-Bado Criticism 20th February 2020
Speaking from the epicentre of destruction of a civilisation, Walter Benjamin's essays express a deep concern for the state of literature and society.
Philip Ó Ceallaigh Criticism 27th January 2020
Caelainn Hogan’s new book documents the 'shame-industrial complex' of mother-and-baby homes and Magdalene laundries, a system that reached into every nook and cranny of Irish society.
Carol Ballantine Criticism 16th December 2019
Ben Lerner's third novel goes back to the 1990s to search for the roots of contemporary crises in language and masculinity.
John Patrick McHugh Criticism 2nd December 2019
Stephen Sexton's debut collection is 'a beautiful, vital, generous work of art.'
Lily Ní Dhomhnaill Criticism 29th October 2019
Anne Boyer's writing is a reckoning with the facts of a body, an inquiry into a situation we spend our lives trying to avoid.
Sinéad Gleeson Criticism 8th October 2019
Lucy Sweeney Byrne's debut collection is, at its core, a book of squandered yearning.
Emily Cooper Criticism 30th September 2019
The first collection of Maxim Osipov's stories to appear in English sparks with acerbic insight into the daily challenge of being an ordinary person.
Philip Ó Ceallaigh Criticism 4th September 2019
The stories collected in this new anthology, edited by Lucy Caldwell, reveal a new grammar in Irish fiction.
Luke Warde Criticism 27th August 2019
The particular promises and contradictions of the Berlin art-world are examined in Elvia Wilk's dystopian, and yet all-too-relatable, debut novel.
Rebecca O'Dwyer Criticism 15th August 2019
Drawing on a diary found at an estate auction, Kathryn Scanlan's debut is a beguiling, hybrid book; part diary, part poem, part potent collage.
Xenobe Purvis Criticism 1st August 2019
War, death, and the act of witnessing – the world in Ilya Kaminsky's second collection is anything but silent.
Dimitra Xidous Criticism 2nd July 2019
Skilfully-drawn characters and complex emotional detail bump up against formal experimentation in Adrian Duncan's debut novel.
Seán Hewitt Criticism 18th June 2019
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