From what looks set to be a rich literary year, Arminta Wallace selects highlights for 2005.
The Sea. John Banville, Picador (May)
A man whose wife has recently died returns to the seaside village where he spent his summers as a boy. Memories of his dying wife mingle with no less vivid recollections of a childhood infatuation, in a meditation on the nature of time, love and our hold on the past, and the past's hold on us. The prose is enigmatic, elegant, intense, so sharply honed you can smell the sea, hear the birds. Everything pales in the face of the writing itself: "They departed, the gods, on the day of the strange tide." And that's only the opening sentence . . .
Memoirs. Ruairi Quinn, Hodder Headline Ireland (September)
Given that memoirs by anyone and everyone have been coming out by the truckload, the silence from the political end of the spectrum has, in general, been deafening. This book by the former leader of the Labour Party is, therefore, awaited with great fascination. It begins with his life as an architect and continues through his political career right up to the present. Quinn kept a political journal for 20 years, recording his personal reactions to events, people and crises; watch out for an illuminating insight into the day-to-day workings of Irish politics.
A Game with Sharpened Knives. Neil Belton, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (May)
The isolated Ireland of the second World War is evoked in this fiction début from this Irish author, best known for The Good Listener: A Life Against Cruelty, the story of Helen Bamber and her work helping survivors of violence. Very much in the current mode of building a work of fiction around historical fact, the novel takes the case of Schrödinger's 17 years in Ireland after he accepted Eamon de Valera's invitation to join the newly established Institute for Advanced Studies in Dublin following his dismissal from his university post in Austria in 1938.
Up With the Times. Conor Brady, Gill and Macmillan (October)
Billed as a frank journey to the heart of a great Irish institution, these memoirs will by no means be of interest just to Conor Brady's former colleagues here in D'Olier Street, where he edited The Irish Times for 16 years from 1986 to 2002. Looking back on an era when violence and atrocities were a nightly occurrence in the North, to stories such as the X case and the fall of Bishop Casey, and with a cast of characters that includes Charlie Haughey, Albert Reynolds and Mary Robinson, to name but a few, the book promises to delve into the personal and corporate tensions at the heart of Ireland's longest-established national newspaper. We can hardly wait.
A Fine Place To Daydream: Racehorses, Romance and the Irish. Bill Barich, HarperCollins Entertainment (March)
The Cheltenham Festival has become something of an annual pilgrimage for Irish trainers, jockeys and, above all, punters of all social shapes and sizes. Here it comes under the scrutiny of American novelist Bill Barich, who has lived in Dublin since 2001 and is something of a racing fanatic. The book, which opens with the National Hunt season, goes - naturally - for the big finish at Cheltenham. Along the way, Barich accumulates a fistful of local colour, humour, and larger-than-life personalities in what ought to be a roller-coaster ride.
Larks' Eggs: New and Selected Stories. Desmond Hogan, Lilliput (autumn)
Remember Desmond Hogan? In the early 1980s two dazzlingly accomplished books, The Ikon Maker and Diamonds at the Bottom of the Sea, propelled him on to the A-list of up-and-coming Irish writers and earned him comparisons with Salman Rushdie and Kazuo Ishiguro. Then, to all intents and purposes, he disappeared. Now he's back; and this latest collection of 31 stories - of which a dozen are new, and feature such semi-autobiographical themes as a son's relationship with his father, and a young man's turbulent lifestyle - may well put him right back up there.
Saturday. Ian McEwan, Jonathan Cape (February)
Ian McEwan has been on a bit of a roll in recent years, what with Amsterdam winning the Booker in 1998, Atonement being almost everybody's favourite book ever, and the "unfilmable" Enduring Love finally hitting the big screen last month. It will be interesting to see if he sustains the momentum with his new novel. Saturday does exactly what it says in the title: it hinges on a chance meeting between a successful neurosurgeon and a violent thug and takes place over a single day in spring 2003 when more than a million people marched in London to protest against the then imminent war in Iraq. After the historical Atonement McEwan wanted, he has said, to write about the present and a world that was clearly going through fundamental changes; while September 11th was really a moment for journalists, "for novelists these things take longer to sink in".
Aftermath: The Omagh Bombing and the Families' Pursuit of Justice. Ruth Dudley Edwards, Harvill/Secker (April)
Speaking of sectarian hatred, or the lack of it, with Northern politics moving into its most optimistic phase for many years, it's perhaps a good time to revisit some of the bad times; just so we don't go back there. Ruth Dudley Edwards's study of the Omagh bombing concentrates, not on the atrocity itself, but on the civil court case against the Real IRA which followed it, and on the way in which the survivors and relatives channelled their grief into positive action.
Harbour Lights. Derek Mahon, Gallery Press (April)
This new collection of poems will also include some translations by Mahon. Gallery will also be publishing Conor O'Callaghan's third collection of poems, Fiction, the same month. Still on the poetry front, John F. Deane has a new collection, The Instruments of Art, due from Carcanet in November. After many years at the helm, Deane is handing over the reins of Dedalus Press, for so long synonymous with him, to poet Pat Boran, whose poetry list will be intriguing to watch unfold in the months ahead.
The Faber Book of Best New Irish Short Stories. Edited by David Marcus, Faber (April)
In his first volume of stories for Faber, the legendary editor, David Marcus - in his 80s and still going strong - assembles a stellar cast which brings old favourites together with an emerging generation of new writers. Neil Jordan, Gerard Donovan, Mary Morrissy, Claire Keegan, Colm Tóibín, Colum McCann . . . need we say more?
Shake Hands With The Devil. Roméo Dallaire, Arrow (February)
The Canadian three-star general, Roméo Dallaire, was sent to command the UN mission in Rwanda during its darkest hour - 800,000 people were murdered there in 1994 - and was so affected by what he saw that he subsequently tried to kill himself. He tells a tale of courage, of good and evil, and of petty bureaucracy gone crazy. The book is important because it reveals the failure of the UN to back its peacekeeping mission and to stop the genocide as well as the failure of Rwandans who might also have been able to halt the bloodletting. Rwanda is also, incidentally, the inspiration for Andrew Miller's novel, The Optimists (Sceptre, March), about a photo-journalist traumatised by witnessing a massacre in central Africa.
The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle. East Robert Fisk, Fourth Estate (May)
Robert Fisk knows more about the Middle East than most of the combined populations of Europe and America, and he shares his insights with the rest of us in this book about the run-up to the war in Iraq and the growing hatred of the West among Muslims of all shades of opinion. He also chronicles our abject habit of supporting ruthless dictatorships - and makes some predictions about how things may shape up in the area over the months and years to come.
Anna of All the Russias: The Biography of Anna Akhmatova. Elaine Feinstein, Weidenfeld & Nicholson (April)
Anna Akhmatova was more than just a poet whose work is marked by uncommon precision and power; she was also a celebrated beauty who survived three brutally unhappy marriages. Meanwhile, her courage in the face of Stalin's dictatorship was an inspiration to millions of Russians. No shortage of material, then, for the feisty Feinstein to get her teeth into in what may well be the biggest biography of the year, in every sense of the word. Another contender for that title might well be Hilary Spurling's mammoth study, Matisse the Master: A Life of Henri Matisse - The Conquest of Colour, 1909-1954, the second and final volume of her magnum opus on the painter, focusing on his glory years (Hamish Hamilton, March).
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. J.K. Rowling, Bloomsbury (July 16th)
For Potterites the end is nigh - but not just yet. This is the penultimate tome in the series that has held the world in thrall - and made J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury rich in the process. This volume will be followed in due course by the seventh - and last.
Conquering England: Ireland in Victorian London. Roy Foster and Fintan Cullen, National Portrait Gallery Books (March)
"England," wrote George Bernard Shaw, "has conquered Ireland, so there was nothing for it but to come over and conquer England." Opening on March 9th, a major exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London's Trafalgar Square explores the Irish presence in London during the Victorian period; and this accompanying illustrated book, with a foreword by Fiona Shaw, may well encourage another exodus - a peaceful one this time - as we all troop over to see it. As if we needed an excuse . . .
Haw-Haw: The Tragedy of William and Margaret Joyce. Nigel Farndale, Macmillan (April)
After years of obscurity the infamous voice of "Germany Calling", recently the subject of a biography by Mary Kenny, is in for more scrutiny, along with his wife, who was also the voice of less famous, though still insidious, pro-Nazi wireless talks during the second World War.
A Jealous Ghost. A.N. Wilson, Hutchinson (April)
OK, listen up, those of you who are still reading Colm Tóibín's The Master - where have you heard this storyline before? Naïve, idealistic young girl takes a job in an isolated country house as nanny to a pair of rich kids . . . Yup, A.N. Wilson has re-written Henry James's classic story, The Turn of the Screw, and hasn't - by all accounts - held back in the disturbing climax department. A spine-tingling treat in store.
The Outlandish Knight: Sir William Johnson and the Invention of America. Fintan O'Toole, Faber (March)
A bit of a departure for the critic, literary biographer and essayist, this all-action historical non-fiction book documents the extraordinary life of an Irish Catholic from a peasant background who converted to Protestantism, emigrated to America, made a fortune in the fur trade - and then married an Iroquois woman, adopted her religion and became embroiled in the Seven Years' War between Britain and France. It's hard to see how any of this has anything to do with America as we know it: intriguingly, however, it does, and there's no better man than O'Toole to point out the parallels.
With Friends Like These: The Real Story of the Emergency Aid Industry. Linda Polman, Viking (June)
The author of the powerful polemic, We Did Nothing, this time offers an exposé of the billion-dollar aid industry, asking the controversial question: are we doing more harm than good? From amputees in Sierra Leone who sell the rights to their stumps to Liberian child soldiers who want to see cash up front before they will allow themselves to be saved, Polman presents a frightening face of the aid world we rarely see.
The Invisible Century. Richard Panek, Fourth Estate (March)
Cosmology and psychology are, philosophically speaking, where it's at nowadays - but where did they come from? And how did they get such a grip on Western thought processes? Richard Panek digs deep into the ideas of the last century in order to show how Freud and Einstein upended our assumptions about, respectively, our inner and outer worlds. Physics has come a long way in the half-century since Einstein's death in 1955, of course - and if you want to find out just how far, check out also Michio Kaku's modestly titled Alternative Universes, Creation, and Our Future in the Cosmos (Allen Lane, January).
Istanbul: A life and a City. Orhan Pamuk, Faber (April)
As anybody who has read The Black Book will confirm, Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk, author of My Name Is Red, has a particular gift for vividly visual recreation of Istanbul's outlandish streetscapes, dilapidated Ottoman villas, cobbled stairways slippy with rain, breathtaking waterways, etc. Even in his novels, it's hard to be sure what's "real" and what isn't; it will, most likely, be even less clear when he turns the "non-fiction" spotlight on his own family, who - apparently - all lived on separate floors of an Istanbul apartment building known as Pamuk Apartments.
Al-Jazeera: How Arab TV News Challenged The World. Hugh Miles, Abacus (January)
Time was, we'd never heard of it; suddenly we're all watching it. Now here comes the true story behind the Arabic-language news network, which is said to be Osama Bin Laden's channel of choice and has 50 million viewers across the Middle East but which, as far as the West is concerned, always seems to be the bearer of bad news.
Memoirs. John McGahern, Faber (autumn)
If 'The Lanes', the extract in the latest issue of Granta magazine (Winter, 88), entitled Mothers, is anything to go by, McGahern's memoirs - as yet untitled - will be every bit as engaging as you might expect. A lesson in how memoir should be done, this will undoubtedly be one of the books of the year.
Runaway. Alice Munro, Chatto & Windus (February)
When, oh when, is Alice Munro going to win the Man Booker Prize? Could this be the collection which finally does it for her? At its centre are "three stories connected into one long narrative whose totality emerges only when all the pieces are in place", making "art out of everyday lives" . . . it sounds like Munro at her matchless best. It comes out the same month as the latest novel from another trans-Atlantic heavyweight: Villages by John Updike (Hamish Hamilton)
Human Cargo: A Journey Among Refugees. Caroline Moorehead, Chatto & Windus (February)
It's one of the great unspoken tragedies of our times, not to mention one of the biggest headaches for civil governments all over the world: with the global turnover reaching some $7 billion a year, human trafficking is now more profitable, and considerably more ruthless, than the international drugs trade. Here Moorehead seeks out refugees, asylum-seekers and migrants and lets them speak for themselves.
Michael O'Leary: A Life in Full Flight. Alan Ruddock, Penguin Ireland (September)
It seems we can't get enough of Michael "Ryanair" O'Leary, but have we got to the bottom of our most colourful businessman yet? Apparently not, and this biography by the former editor of the Scotsman and Sunday Times columnist promises the "real" story behind the well-rehearsed snippets that turn up in every newspaper feature.
Grace and Truth. Jennifer Johnston, Review (March)
Sally, the successful actress, returns to her Goatstown home from a European tour to find her husband is leaving her, setting her wondering if she really is too hard to live with. Hoping for insight into the family secrets that have always dogged her, she turns to her grandfather, the frosty old bishop she has never properly known.
Notes From a Coma. Mike McCormack, Jonathan Cape (May)
Well, there was this guy from Mayo. Except not from Mayo really, because he was adopted from a Romanian orphanage as a baby. And that's only the start of it. Sci-fi meets small town as Irish writer McCormack's anti-hero volunteers for a government project which involves putting him into a coma - and then putting him online. You can see the scope for McCormack's trademark spiky social commentary in this one, sure enough. Fans of his previous books, Getting it in the Head and Crowe's Requiem, will welcome his return to the fray.
The Siege of Derry. Carlo Gébler, Little Brown (March)
Just about everything we've ever been told about the Siege of Derry is wrong, says Carlo Gébler - and he sets out to set the record straight in a blow-by-blow account, aimed at the general reader, of one of Irish history's most bloody and inglorious events.
The Earth and Sky of Jacques Dorme. Andrei Makine, Sceptre (April)
The adventure of a French fighter pilot killed in a crash in theSiberian mountains is woven into the life of an emigré Russian writer based in Paris, as both Russia and France come under the Makine microscope in what promises to be another slice of stylish storytelling
Why Europe Will Run the 21st Century. Mark Leonard, Fourth Estate (February)
Who - us? Heck, yes, says Mark Leonard, who's clearly not a man to sign up for political platitudes. Having established the Foreign Policy Centre think-tank at the ripe old age of 24, and having been named by the Sunday Times as one of the 500 most powerful people in Britain, Leonard is in a good position to undertake this radical reassessment of the nature of political power, which puts Europe at the centre of the new new world order. On the other hand, the Canadian expert, John Ralston Saul reckons nationalism will be the Next Big Thing (The Collapse of Globalism, Atlantic Books, April), so maybe it's time to place your bets, folks.
This Is The Country. William Wall, Sceptre (May)
Brace yourselves, already. There's a good deal to be learned about contemporary Ireland - not to mention Cork slang - in the latest instalment from the curiously dark world of William Wall. Did you know, for example, that, in Cork, "mint" is an accolade and not a flavour? Well, there you go. Wall talks the talk, big-time, in this novel about an innocent abroad in a world where everybody wants to sell him something. Now that certainly sounds familiar. One among many Irish novels due this year, including The Family on Paradise Pier, by Dermot Bolger (Fourth Estate, April); Little Criminals, by Gene Kerrigan (Vintage, May); Nothing Simple, by Lia Mills (Penguin Ireland, April); and Second Son, by Christy Kenneally (Hodder Headline, April), a début novel from the genial traveller familiar to viewers of RTÉ's No Frontiers programme.
In the Dark Room. Brian Dillon, Penguin Ireland (October)
Brian Dillon lost both his parents at a young age and, in his first book, he explores the question of how memory works - culturally, as opposed to cognitively - as he tried to piece his life together with the help of St Augustine, Proust and contemporary cinema.
Let's Talk. Ed McBain, Orion (March)
If you were wondering why you haven't heard anything from the doyen of crime writers recently, it's because he has been busy having an up-close and personal encounter with cancer of the larynx. This memoir traces his illness and recovery, written - presumably - with his inimitable mix of emotion and acerbic humour. McBain is also back in the thriller business with the first in a new series of crime novels. Alice in Jeopardy (Orion, February) is about a young widow whose children are kidnapped after her husband's death in a boating accident.
Reinventing Dublin's Docklands. Niamh Moore, Four Courts Press (autumn)
Dublin's docklands are back in fashion, having been ignored and neglected for a century. But it hasn't all been plain sailing and trendy bars and cafés; and for most of us, the docklands might as well be another planet, we know so little about what goes on there. This timely book aims to fill in the gaps.
Wish Me Well: Notes on My Sleeve. Mick Hanly, Gill and Macmillan (March)
Is it a musical memoir? Or a memoir set to music? Twelve new songs from the man who gave us Past the Point of Rescue also form the chapter titles of a book which delves into both life and art with unswerving honesty. Honesty generally means there's something to be honest about; in this case it's drink and betrayal, so fasten your seatbelts, folks - it could be a bumpy ride.
Doctor Salt. Gerard Donovan, Scribner (January)
Gerard Donovan's last novel, Schopenhauer's Telescope, was long-listed for the Man Booker and won the Kerry Group Irish Fiction award at Listowel. This one is about a guy called Sunless; a sinister drugs company; a missing father. Is Sunless mad? Or is it the system? You get the picture: Quirky meets angry.
County Bounty: A Treasure Map of Ireland. Rosita Boland, New Island (September)
A cabinet of curiosities from Irish Times writer Rosita Boland, who travelled the length and breadth of the land to seek out an esoteric tale from each of the 32 counties for this offbeat look at Ireland, an extract from which will shortly appear in The Dublin Review.
A Long Way Down. Nick Hornby, Viking (May)
The new novel from the author of High Fidelity and About A Boy will feature a group of four people who all meet for the first time one New Year's Eve, when they choose the same tower-block roof from which to jump off and kill themselves, but who, their suicide attempts frustrated, begin to make an impact on one another's lives.
A Long, Long Way. Sebastian Barry, Faber (April)
The follow-up to The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty and Annie Dunne finds Sebastian Barry on the trail of a young Dublin soldier fighting for the Allies in 1914. Two of his plays, Whistling Psyche and Fred and Jane, are also due from Faber in May.
Utterly Monkey. Nick Laird, Fourth Estate (May)
New face on the block Nick Laird, known best in some circles as Mr Zadie Smith, will follow his book of poems, To A Fault (see review W12), with this début novel featuring a missing stash of loyalist cash and a snazzy young Irish litigator in a London law firm. Zany stuff.
Sun and Shadow. Ake Edwardson, Harvill/Secker (June)
The coolest crime fiction - in every sense of the word - is coming out of the far north these days, and there's another crop of Nordic novelists to watch out for this year. Ake Edwardson's hero is called Erik Winter, which is possibly an ironic comment on nordic stereotyping. Also due from the same publisher in May, the latest instalment of the Jar City series, set in Reykjavik, in the shape of Arnaldur Indridason's award-winning Silence of the Grave
The Irish Art of Controversy. Lucy McDiarmid, Lilliput (May)
What was being talked about hereabouts in the early days of the last century? The Hugh Lane paintings; Shaw's play, Blanco Posnet; Roger Casement's Black Diaries. The highly regarded Anglo-Irish scholar, Lucy McDiarmid, who edited Lady Gregory's writings for Penguin, turns her attention to controversy, Irish-style.
How We Are Hungry. Dave Eggers, Penguin (March)
Eggers, the New York Times noted recently, can write about pretty much anything and make it glitter and somersault on the page. This new collection from the editor of the influential literary journal McSweeney's and the author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius features the best of his recent "long" short fiction, none of which has been previously published on this side of the Atlantic. Meanwhile, in June, Hamish Hamilton will publish his non-fiction book, Lost Boy: Valentino and the Lost Boys of Sudan, about one survivor against the odds of Sudan's intractable civil war.
Witnesses: Inside the Easter Rising. Annie Ryan, Liberties Press (March)
The first book to draw on official witness statements taken after the first World War and only released to the public in 2002, Witnesses brings the events of Easter 1916 to life in a vivid and very personal way by giving a voice to those who took part. It features an introduction by historian Margaret McCurtain.
Joyce's Pupi.l Drago Jancar, Brandon Books (September)
"A young man learns English in Trieste in 1914 from James Joyce . . ." The characters in the stories of Drago Jancar live on the edge; ordinary people caught up in the sometimes terrible cultural clashes of central Europe. With the inclusion of the accession countries this is the Europe to which we all belong now, and this new collection showcases the work of one of the leading Slovenian writers and democratic activists of his generation.
The Door Stands Open: Czeslaw Milosz 1911-2004. Seamus Heaney, Irish Writers' Centre (January)
And here's another first. The first book to be published by the Irish Writers' Centre will be, literally, a collectors' item. The centre is publishing in two different limited editions - one deluxe - recent work by Seamus Heaney written in memory of Czeslaw Milosz, including the elegy, 'What Passed at Colonus', and the memorial essay, 'The Door Stands Open'. Signed by the author, you won't find these on general release in the bookshops but diehards and collectors can order them from the centre.
There You Are:Writings on Irish American Literature and History. Thomas Flanagan, New York Review Classics (April)
Is it the different typefaces, or the understated covers? Or is it memories of rooting around in Harvard's labyrinthine bookshops? Whatever it is, there's something very special about the best of American-published books - and they don't come much better than these New York Review specials. Flanagan's acerbic observations on his Irish-American colleagues come with an introduction by Seamus Heaney, while another famous Seamus - Deane - writes the introduction for the NYRB paperback edition of The Year of the French, also due in April
Going Sane. Adam Phillips, Hamish Hamilton (February)
Why so many books about insanity and so few about sanity? Is it because madness can often be seen to be glamorised while sanity appears duller, dowdier? Britain's best known interpreter of psychoanalytic ideas explores what it might mean to be sane.
Charades: Adrienne McGlinchey and the Donegal Gardaí. Karen McGlinchey, Gill and Macmillan (February)
The story of the star witness at the Morris Tribunal, written by her sister, and likely to be a bit of shocker, if last summer's tribunal report is anything to go by. You couldn't, in all honesty, make this one up.