Artists in the Blitz. Book review: Noonday by Pat BarkerThe last in a trilogy about a trio of artists is at its best in the Blitz, writes Eileen BattersbySat Aug 29 2015 - 01:07
Seiobo There Below: A very human odyssey of the imaginationLászló Krasznahorkai’s newly translated book ‘has everything anyone would wish to experience from reading’Sat Aug 22 2015 - 00:07
Up Against the Night review: white South African back in the mother landJustin Cartwright’s new novel, set in the country of his youth, is laced with the author’s trademark humane ironySat Aug 15 2015 - 06:06
Courage: A funny, sexy woman who made war work for herA new translation of Grimmelshausen’s 17th century romp about a bawdy beauty captures its vigourSat Aug 08 2015 - 05:03
A Woman Loved, by Andreï Makine: dreams of an empressReview: A struggling film-maker attempts to penetrate the maneater mystique of Catherine the Great in this majestic novel by a visionary writerSat Aug 01 2015 - 01:00
Eileen Battersby: Readers the big winners in Man Booker longlistTom McCarthy’s ‘Satin Island’ is the highlight of a varied and intriguing selectionWed Jul 29 2015 - 22:42
The Ginger Man review: Dangerfield at 60 – still sailing his dream boatsJP Donleavy’s lively picaresque novel, first published in 1955, has never been out of printSat Jul 25 2015 - 00:58
If you build it, they will come for their cut: Birth of a Bridge, by Maylis de KerangalReview: This French novel about a very American megaproject is both astonishingly lyrical and bracingly topical, writes Eileen BattersbySat Jul 18 2015 - 09:00
Harper Lee review: A pretty decent effort and not much moreEileen Battersby’s verdict on author’s much anticipated Go Set a WatchmanWed Jul 15 2015 - 11:00
Go Set a Watchman: 12 key pointsThe convoluted history of Harper Lee’s Go Set a WatchmanTue Jul 14 2015 - 15:03
The Mark and the Void, by Paul Murray | ReviewThe Dublin writer’s anticipated follow-up to the engaging ‘Skippy Dies’ tackles the financial crisisSat Jul 11 2015 - 18:01
Go Set a Watchman: little to celebrate about first chapter‘The publishers are offering a rejected version of a loved novel as a sequel’Sat Jul 11 2015 - 18:00
Time to read a good long bookThe days are long, the sun is high. There is plenty you could be doing, but instead why not sit back and read a decent bookSun Jul 05 2015 - 09:00
The Red Collar by Jean-Christophe Rufin review: dignified and compassionateRufin creates convincing individuals with pitch-perfect dialogueSat Jul 04 2015 - 16:00
The great books that define the Great WarOn the anniversary of the assassination that triggered WWI, Eileen Battersby selects the books, many written by veterans, that illuminate the conflict and its aftermathSun Jun 28 2015 - 02:00
The Meursault Investigation by Kamel Daoud review: L’Etranger danger‘A Frenchman kills an Arab . . .’ This angry novel by an Algerian journalist is a bold riposte to Albert Camus’s existential classicSat Jun 27 2015 - 01:00
Father’s Day: Dads in literature – the good, the bad and the greatFrom Bob Cratchit to Atticus Finch, from Philip Roth to Ivan Turgenev, Eileen Battersby surveys fathers in fiction and the authors who created themSun Jun 21 2015 - 08:45
None So Blind by JA González Sainz review: man on the marginsA father and husband’s profound, human musings dominate this understated, quietly devastating Spanish novel set in the tense Basque countrySat Jun 20 2015 - 01:00
Eileen Battersby’s last-minute book-buying tips for Father’s DayFrom Tony McCoy to Siegfriend Sassoon, from Jenny Uglow to Tim Winton, our literary correspondent has come up with a list of titles to make Dad happy on SundayFri Jun 19 2015 - 12:56
Jim Crace wins IMPAC award for outstanding HarvestNovel is terrific and tells story of rural community faced with the coming of enclosureWed Jun 17 2015 - 12:33
Jim Crace interview: ‘I never think of the reader. I am curious about things, I need to find out, so off I go’‘Harvest is my lucky book,' says the 2015 Impac winner. 'It is also my most English book, but it’s funny, it’s also been my most universal. People see their own country’s situation reflected. It’s always the case, the rich man comes in and pushes the ordinary people out’Wed Jun 17 2015 - 11:45
Jim Crace wins €100,000 International Impac Dublin Literary Award for HarvestEnglish-language fiction, currently overshadowed by the quality of translated writing, needed an outstanding work and Crace has written one, argues Eileen BattersbyWed Jun 17 2015 - 11:45
Bloomsday: If you haven’t read Ulysses yet, start hereEileen Battersby details five good reasons to dive into a truly great work of fictionTue Jun 16 2015 - 07:13
Dublinesque by Enrique Vila-Matas: a delicious Joycean picaresqueFounder of the Order of Finnegans, dedicated to the celebration of James Joyce, the Spanish author’s familiarity with Irish literature makes Dublinesque a pleasure to readTue Jun 16 2015 - 00:56
Bloomsday: What would Molly Bloom make of Joyce and ‘Ulysses’?Eileen Battersby imagines what the central players of Joyce’s Ulysses think about the novel that made them famous and how they feel about the man who wrote itMon Jun 15 2015 - 19:30
Eileen Battersby: WB Yeats was a towering figure in Irish lifePaying tribute to the many faces and phases of Ireland’s global literary giantSat Jun 13 2015 - 02:00
June by Gerbrand Bakker review: stunningly humaneNot one word is misjudged in Dutch novelist’s story of tragedy and memorySat Jun 13 2015 - 01:00
Saul Bellow revisited on the centenary of his birthEileen Battersby celebrates the work of the great American, Russian-inflected, Jewish writer, an undisputed master of language and characterisationWed Jun 10 2015 - 16:28
Frolicsome meditation served on a bed of sadnessIrreverent playfulness remains the key mark of the Czech masterSat Jun 06 2015 - 01:00
The Life of Saul Bellow: To Fame and Fortune, 1915-1964 by Zachary LeaderDespite access to revealing documents, the biography lacks real insight and is a dull, overlong account of the writer’s lifeSat May 30 2015 - 01:00
The new reign of writing from Spain is far above the plainEileen Battersby invites you to say Si Si to great writing from Spain, the mother country of a magnificent global literature, and salutes Hispabooks, a Madrid publisher commissioning English translations of contemporary classicsFri May 29 2015 - 11:30
The End of Days by Jenny Erpenbeck review: memory as a punch to the heartWinner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2015, a chilling and profound tapestry woven through the agonies of 20th-century European history. A superb, even supreme example of exciting international fictionWed May 27 2015 - 19:45
Eileen Battersby’s favourite African writersTo mark Africa Day, Ireland’s annual celebration of its African community, The Irish Times literary correspondent picks her favourite African titlesSun May 24 2015 - 01:00
Authors on Africa, from Heart of Darkness to The Heart of the MatterFor Africa Day, Eileen Battersby selects 13 classic novels set in Africa but written by outsiders, including several Irish authorsSun May 24 2015 - 00:54
Review: Uppsala Woods, by Alvaro Colomer‘It is all so desperately funny because it is human’Sat May 23 2015 - 01:00
My Father’s Dreams by Evald Flisar review: a son’s flirtation with madnessFrom Slovenia comes this difficult but rewarding tale of a child who goes through life suffering and surviving the sins of his fatherSat May 16 2015 - 01:00
RIP Richard Adams, author of Watership Down, and a bit of a BigwigMany of the late author's qualities – candour, logic and a yeoman's disposition – live on in the characters he createdSat May 09 2015 - 10:50
Girl at War by Sara Novic review: notes from a phony war-torn childhoodThis clumsy debut novel never for a moment convinces in its setting, characters or conflict, says Eileen BattersbySat May 09 2015 - 01:00
VE Day: Joy in Europe, but worse horrors of WWII were yet to comeEileen Battersby: Europe’s streets lined with people too exhausted by six years of griefFri May 08 2015 - 09:45
Reclaiming the war: Army of ghostsWar writing at heart is about the ambivalence of loyalty to class, nation, and friends, and of belief and the business of being human, and more recent Irish writing on the Great War, in reopening a closed chapter in our history, is no different in exploring all those ambiguitiesTue May 05 2015 - 01:00
All Quiet on the Western Front: Portrait of Germany’s Generation War‘We have become wild beasts. We do not fight, we defend ourselves against annihilation . . . ’ Erich Maria Remarque’s unmatchable anti-war novel was a literary sensation in pre-Nazi GermanyTue May 05 2015 - 01:00
The Birthday Buyer by Adolfo García Ortega review: a Spanish take on the HolocaustShaken to the core by the memoirs of Primo Levi, a father of two obsesses over the Levis’ tiny Auschwitz prisoner in this urgent, defiant novelSat May 02 2015 - 01:00
Eileen Battersby’s favourite South African novelsTo mark Freedom Day in South Africa, the Irish Times literary correspondent offers her selection of its finest literary worksMon Apr 27 2015 - 13:32
Gallipoli as seen through writers’ eyesThe tragedy in the Dardanelles was not memorialised as much in fiction as the Western Front but there are still many books and poems which keep its memory aliveSat Apr 25 2015 - 04:00
Tiger Milk, by Stefanie de Velasco: A raw tale of teenage friendshipReview: Lively coming-of-age novel with likeable, well-developed characters and convincing dialogueSat Apr 25 2015 - 01:00
Shakespeare, Dickens, Wren, Austen, Hardy, Turner: in praise of ... the EnglishEileen Battersby marks St George’s Day with a kaleidoscopic celebration of our noisy neighbour’s contribution to world cultureThu Apr 23 2015 - 11:35
The Key/An Eochair, by Máirtín Ó Cadhain: Frenetic satire with linguistic flairSixty-year-old absurdist comedy in the Civil Service remains as fresh as everSat Apr 18 2015 - 01:00
Colum McCann is only Irish writer on Impac shortlistThemes of war and real life dominate Dublin Literary Award shortlistWed Apr 15 2015 - 01:00
The Tin Drum by Günter Grass – the greatest novel of the 20th centuryThe Tin Drum combines history, horror story, burlesque cartoon and satiric fable with vibrant, subversive imagery. Stylistically it is light years removed from the stately narratives of Thomas MannMon Apr 13 2015 - 17:53
Günter Grass: his best worksStart with the Danzig trilogy which includes Günter Grass’s majestic ‘The Tin Drum’Mon Apr 13 2015 - 16:54
