On the fiction front this week, Irish Times crime-writing columnist Declan Burke reviews Belfast Noir, a Northern anthology edited by Stuart Neville and Adrian McKinty.
Eileen Battersby reviews Uppsala Woods by Alvaro Colomer, translated by Jonathan Dunne.
Sara Keating’s ebooks column examines how Alice in Wonderland is getting a mixed digital treatment 150 years on from first publication.
The new poem this week is by our poetry critic, John McAuliffe, taken from his new Gallery Press collection, The Way In.
In non-fiction, Malarky author Anakana Schofield reviews Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution, by Mona Eltahawy.
Closer to home, Susan McKay, whose books include Sophia’s Story and Without Fear – A History of the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, reviews Sexual Politics in Modern Ireland, edited by Jennifer Redmond, Sonja Tiernan, Sandra McEvoy, Mary McAuliffe.
We are also serving up a broad range of biographies and memoirs.
David Murphy, a lecturer in military history at NUI Maynooth and author of Breaking Point of the French Army: the Nivelle Offensive of 1917, reviews Bonaparte by Patrice Gueniffey.
Mike Milotte, author of Communism in Modern Ireland: The Pursuit of the Workers’ Republic Since 1916, reviews Treading Lightly on Stalin’s Grave: Sean Murray, Marxist-Leninist and Irish Socialist Republican, by Seán Byers.
David Woolner, Hyde Park resident historian of the Roosevelt Institute in New York, reviews America’s Pastor: Billy Graham and the Shaping of a Nationby Grant Wacker.
Jim Carroll reviews Going Into the City: Portrait of the Critic As A Young Man, a memoir by veteran Village Voice journalist Robert Christgau.
Tony Clayton-Lea Another Little Piece of my Heart (My Life of rock and revolution in the 60s) by Richard Goldstein.
Finally, our guest Word for Word columnist is Martin Colthorpe, programme director of International Literature Festival Dublin, which runs until Sunday, May 24th. He explores how literary festivals have evolved in the era of instant communication to become a place where the mind is actively slowing down in order to learn and process.
