This weekend’s Eason book offer when you purchase a copy of The Irish Times is €7 off the cover price of Last Stories by William Trevor, now just €4.99.
It’s been a good week for writers from the North. Jan Carson won the EU Prize for Literature Ireland 2019 for The Fire Starters; Flying Tips for Flightless Birds won an unprecedented hat-trick of prizes for debut author Kelly McCaughrain – the CBI Book of the Year, Eilís Dillon and Children’s Choice awards; and Stephen Sexton was shortlisted for the Forward Poetry Prize for Best Debut Collection for If All the World and Love Were Young.
What's that? Wasn't he the poet we singled out back in March in our "Best of Irish: 10 rising stars of Irish writing" feature for St Patrick's Day? Why yes, he was. Well remembered!
Moving now to the east, congratulations also to Omani author Jokha Alharthi, winner of the Man Booker International Prize for Celestial Bodies.
In Saturday's Irish Times books pages, Declan Kiberd reflects on Samuel Beckett as a very Irish yet very European writer. I interview Joseph O'Connor about his new Bram Stoker novel, Shadowplay; a year after the death of her husband, playwright Tom Murphy, actor Jane Brennan talks to Deirdre Falvey about his work and their life together; plus a new poem by Gerald Dawe; and May's winning New Irish Writing short story and poems.
Our reviews include Diarmaid Ferriter on Seamus Mallon: A Shared Home Place; Rob Doyle on Bitcoin Billionaires: A True Story of Genius, Betrayal and Redemption by Ben Mezrich, and The Trouble With Being Born by EM Cioran, translated by Richard Howard; John Boyne on Trust Exercise by Susan Choi; Eoin McNamee on Furious Hours by Casey Cep; Dermot Bolger on Faber & Faber: The Untold Story by Toby Faber; Sarah Gilmartin on Caravan of the Lost and Left Behind by Deirdre Shanahan; and Sara keating on the best new children's books.
