Author Naeem Murr: ‘My stories emerge out of my Irish mother’s silence and the silence of my dead father’
The writer on Gaza-themed new novel Every Exit Brings You Home, not being from anywhere in particular, and the ‘terrifying’ reality of Ice in Chicago
By Martin Doyle
New poetry: Frank Ormsby’s tremendous poems loom out of darkness, shot with stars, lit with sound
The Salt King by Natasha Pulley: Overwhelming darkness leavened by shining dialogue
Author Meg Mason: ‘It’s really warping, all these people who don’t know you, who feel like they do’
Reds: A Global History of Communism by Paul Mason – the problem of revisionism and working-class awareness
Books in brief: The Princess of Connemara, The Judges of Ireland 1866-1921 and Alone in Japan: A Journey to the Future
The Fate of the World: A History and Future of the Climate Crisis: A sobering narrative
Sunrise by Téa Obreht: Timelines converge successfully in absorbing novel
SHORT STORIES
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POETRY
Middlemen: Literary Agents and the Making of American Fiction – elegant, ambitious and very smart
By Mei Chin
The World’s Reformation: A story combining academic authority with gripping readability
By Andrew Roycroft
Bytes and Bullets: Study of AI arms race is meticulously researched and deeply disturbing
By Tom Clonan
How to Train Your Dragon author: ‘I have always liked the idea of an animal you could talk to’
By Martin Doyle
Fiction in translation: How trauma interrupts the flow of a life, to devastating effect
By Sara Baume
The Writer’s Writer: A dive into John McGahern’s literary archive shows his huge impact
By Eamon Maher
Stealing Hitler’s Rocket: Thoroughly engaging story of frantic race to smuggle out a V-2
By Andrew Lynch
A grafter and a dreamer, Shirley Jackson found that sweet spot between reality and magic
By Jan Carson
John Berger: From Life. Biographer Tom Overton, like his subject, breaks the vessel he is writing within
By Timothy O’Grady
A Little Bit Bad: One for the bath with a glass of wine, in the best possible way
By Lucy Sweeney Byrne
Seamus Heaney and Catholicism: An astute account of religion’s afterlife in poet’s work
By Nicholas Allen
In Claudia Rankine’s Triage, the reader bears witness to an intense and unresolved debate
By Rachel Andrews
The Life Swap by Jeananne Craig: Even the most minor characters get a satisfying arc as they face their flaws
By Ferdia Roche
