Reading In The Dark

Seamus Deane

Seamus Deane was born in Derry and educated at Queen's University, Belfast and at Cambridge. From 1969-80 he lectured in English at University College, Dublin. He was Professor of Modern English and American Literature at UCD from 1980-93. He is currently Professor of Irish Studies at Notre Dame University, Indiana. He is the author of Celtic Revivals: Essays In Modern Irish Literature 1880-1980, A Short History Of Irish Literature and The French Revolution And Enlightenment In English Literature 1789-1832. He is general editor of the Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing. He has published four collections of poetry.

Reading In The Dark is published by Jonathan Cape

The Blue Flower

Penelope Fitzgerald

Penelope Fitzgerald was born in England in 1916. She now lives in Highgate, London. She started writing in her 60s and had her first novel published in 1977. Since then, three of her nine novels have been shortlisted for the Booker Prize and Off Shore won the prize in 1979. She has also written biographies and literary criticism for various publications. Her book, The Gate Of Angels, was shortlisted for The Irish Times International Fiction Prize in 1991. The Blue Flower was named Book of the Year in 1995 by 19 British newspapers.

The Blue Flower is published by Flamingo

A Fine Balance

Rohinton Mistry

Rohinton Mistry was born in Bombay in 1952. In 1975 he emigrated to Toronto where he worked for 10 years in a bank, studying English and philosophy part-time at the University of Toronto. He published his first short story in 1983 which was awarded a Hart House Prize for Fiction. He won the award again in 1984, and his works have been published in major Canadian literary journals and anthologies. Such a Long Journey, Mistry's first novel, published in March 1991, was shortlisted for the 1991 Booker Prize and was awarded the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book and the WH Smith First Novel Award.

A Fine Balance is published by Faber

Eureka Street

Robert McLiam Wilson

Robert McLiam Wilson was born in Belfast in 1964. He read English at Cambridge but left early to write his first novel, Ripley Bogle, published in 1989, which won the Rooney Prize, the Betty Trask Prize, the Hughes Award, and the Irish Book Award. His second novel, Manfred's Pain, was shortlisted for the Whitbread Award. He is also the author of a non-fiction work, The Dispossessed, with Donovan Wylie. He has recently completed a documentary for Channel 4 on the baseball in Irish history. McLiam Wilson lives in Belfast.

Eureka Street is published by Secker & Warburg