Showing results by author "Colm Toibin" in Literature & Fiction

Set in Ireland in the 1990s, Colm Tóibín's The Blackwater Lightship tells the story of the Devereux family. Dora Devereux, her daughter Lily and her granddaughter Helen have come together after years of strife and reached an uneasy truce. Helen’s adored brother, Declan, is dying. Two friends join him and the women in a crumbling old house by the sea, where the six of them, from different generations and with different beliefs, must listen to and come to terms with one another.

Eilis Lacey is Irish, married to Tony Fiorello, a plumber and one of four Italian American brothers, all of whom live in neighbouring houses on a cul-de-sac in Lindenhurst, Long Island, with their wives and children and Tony's parents. One day, an Irishman comes to the door asking for Eilis by name. He tells her that his wife is pregnant with Tony's child and that when the baby is born, he will not raise it but will leave it with her. Eilis has choices to make, and what she does in the wake of this shattering news is at the heart of one of Tóibín's most riveting and emotional novels to date.

A poignant look at the disillusionment and angst of the post-World War I generation, The Sun Also Rises introduces two of Hemingway’s most unforgettable characters: Jake Barnes and Lady Brett Ashley. The story follows the flamboyant Brett and the hapless Jake as they journey from the wild nightlife of 1920s Paris to the brutal bullfighting rings of Spain with a motley group of expatriates. In his first great literary masterpiece, Hemingway portrays an age of moral bankruptcy, spiritual dissolution, unrealized love, and vanishing illusions.

Young Eilis Lacey dreams of life beyond the confines of her tiny Irish village, but unlike her beautiful sister, Rose, Eilis' gifts are of a more practical nature: she has a head for numbers, and is a loving and dutiful daughter. Yet her ambition cannot be hidden and soon is noted by the Parish Priest, Father Flood. Via a church contact, he arranges for Eilis to travel to America where a job opportunity has arisen in New York with a reputable 'merchant of Italian origin'.

This was the night train to Barcelona, some hours before the dawn. This was 1950, late September. I had left my husband. I had left my home. Katherine Proctor has dared to leave her family in Ireland and reach out for a new life. Determined to become an artist, she flees to Spain, where she meets Miguel, a passionate man who has fought for his own freedoms. They retreat to the quiet intensity of the mountains and begin to build a life together.

In January 1895 Henry James anticipates the opening of his first play, Guy Domville, in London. The production fails, and he returns, chastened and humiliated, to his writing desk. The result is a string of masterpieces, but they are produced at a high personal cost. In The Master Colm Tóibín captures the exquisite anguish of a man who circulated in the grand parlours and palazzos of Europe, who was astonishingly vibrant and alive in his art, and yet whose attempts at intimacy inevitably failed him and those he tried to love.

1960s Ireland. Nora Webster, a widow from a small town, is trying to piece her life back together while caring for her four children after the death of her husband. In a close community where everyone knows your business, Nora is trying to emerge from her own sorrow in private whilst blind to the suffering of her young sons. And yet there are moments when hope might emerge again. Through music and friendship she might find a path to reinvention.

Years after her son’s crucifixion, Mary finds herself alone, fearful, while attempting to reconstruct the events leading to her son's cruel death. With no interest in collaborating with the authors of the Gospel and during a time fraught with upheaval and transition, she tries to tell the truth, revealing herself as a figure of towering moral integrity, and a historical woman portrayed in all her humanity.

Colm Tóibín's The Heather Blazing details the life of Eamon Redmond, a judge in Ireland's high court, a man remote from his wife, his son and daughter and, at least outwardly, his own childhood. The life he has built for himself, between his work in Dublin and his family's retreat by the sea at Cush, is distinguished by order and by achievement. When, like his beloved coastline, it begins to slip away, he is pulled sharply into the present and finds himself revisiting his past.

Ein Aufbruch ins Unbekannte: Die junge Irin Eilis Lacey wandert um 1950 nach Amerika aus, um in Brooklyn eine neue Arbeit zu finden. Doch sie passt sich nur langsam an das neue Leben an, schließt nicht leicht Freundschaft. Ganz allmählich gewinnt sie Selbstvertrauen und merkt, dass sie zu einer selbständigen, erwachsenen Person geworden ist. Das macht ihr die Entscheidung zwischen Irland und Amerika, zwischen dem einen und dem anderen Mann, nicht leichter.

Published to coincide the with 50th anniversary of the Israel occupation of the West Bank, an anthology that explores the human cost of the conflict there as witnessed by such notable writers as Colum McCann, Colm Toibin, Dave Eggers, Madeleine Thien, Eimear McBride and Taiye Selasi and editors Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman.

In Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know, Colm Tóibín turns his incisive gaze to three of Ireland's greatest writers, Oscar Wilde, W. B. Yeats and James Joyce, and their earliest influences: their fathers.

From the thrilling imagination of best-selling, award-winning Colm Tóibín comes this ambitious, violent and modern retelling of one of our oldest and most enduring stories. On the day of his daughter's wedding, Agamemnon orders her sacrifice. His daughter is led to her death, and Agamemnon leads his army into battle, where he is rewarded with glorious victory. Three years later he returns home, and his murderous action has set the entire family - mother, brother, sister - on a path of intimate violence.

Irland i 50'erne: Den unge pige Eilis bor sammen med sin mor og søster i en lille by, hvor der er meget langt til resten af verden. Faren er død, og pengene er små. Storesøsteren arbejder hårdt om dagen og spiller golf om aftenen. Her møder Eilis en praest, som er hjemme på besøg fra New York, og som lover at skaffe Eilis et job "over there". Efter en hård overfart til Amerika møder den lidt sky og tilbageholdende pige den nye verden, Brooklyn og New York. I Brooklyn flytter Eilis ind i et pensionat for irske piger og begynder at arbejde bag disken i en paen tøjforretning.

Antigone stood defiant in the face of tyranny. Best-selling and award winning author Colm Tóibín wrote this new dramatisation of the Greek tragedy especially to be performed by Irish actor Lisa Dwan. Pale Sister gives voice to Antigone’s sister, Ismene, who recounts her sister’s defiance of the king as pressures mount on her to act to vindicate her sister, or even follow her example. Pale Sister tells Antigone’s story through Ismene: the quiet person in the corner, bearing witness to everything.

During the winter solstice, on the shortest day and longest night of the year, the ancient burial chamber at Newgrange is empowered. Its mystifying source is a haunting tale told by locals. Professor O’Kelly believes an archaeologist’s job is to make known only what can be proved. He is undeterred by ghost stories, idle speculation, and caution. Much to the chagrin of the living souls in County Meath. As well as those entombed in the sacred darkness of Newgrange itself. They’re determined to protect the secret of the light, guarded for more than 5,000 years.

Aus dem Englischen von Giovanni Bandini. Colm Toibin erzählt mit einmaliger Empathie das Leben von Thomas Mann als Roman. Von der Kindheit in Lübeck bis zur Heirat in München, von der Gegnerschaft gegen die Nazis bis zum amerikanischen Exil. Wie viele Gesichter hatte der weltberühmte Autor und Familienvater, der sein Gefühlsleben verborgen hielt, zerrissen zwischen homosexuellem Begehren und familiärem Pflichtgefühl, zwischen der Wonne der Bürgerlichkeit und der künstlerischen Askese? (Perlentaucher.de).

Colm Tóibín's Mothers and Sons is a sensitive and beautifully written meditation on the dramas surrounding this most elemental of relationships. Psychologically intricate and emotionally incisive, each finely wrought story teases out the delicate and difficult strands woven between mothers and sons. This is an acute, masterful and moving collection that confirms Tóibín as a great prose stylist of our time.

Vinegar Hill explores the liminal space between private experiences and public events as Tóibín examines a wide range of subjects—politics, queer love, reflections on literary and artistic greats, living through COVID, memory and a fading past, and facing mortality. The poems reflect a life well-travelled and well-lived; from growing up in the town of Enniscorthy, wandering the streets of Dublin and Barcelona, and crossing the bridges of Venice to visiting the White House, listeners will travel through familiar locations and new destinations through Tóibín's unique lens.

Wealthy and devout, Michael and Julia Glynn are the envy of their neighbors and the model Irish Catholic couple, bearing Michael's increasingly painful and crippling arthritis with stoicism. In hope of a miracle, their priest suggests a family pilgrimage to Lourdes. Yet these pious holiday plans are thrown into doubt when anonymous, obscene letters begin to arrive, full of terrible accusations.