Connect by Julian Gough is this weekend’s special offer at Eason when you buy a copy of The Irish Times, with €7 off the cover price, making it just €4.99.
In this interview with Catherine Conroy, Gough calls Connect "a classically Irish novel in disguise, a dysfunctional family trying to deal with their traumas. It's almost a John McGahern novel disguised as a near-future science-fiction novel set in Nevada."
The murder in Derry of journalist and author Lyra McKee has rightly dominated the news. Look out for her books. Her words are an important part of her legacy.
There are three great author interviews in the Magazine section of The Irish Times this Saturday. Shilpa Ganatra talks to Don’t Touch My Hair author Emma Dabiri about race, identity and cultural appropriation, and to leading crime autor Jane Casey about her move back to Brexit Britain and her second-generation Irish detective Maeve Kerrigan. Back home, YouTube star Riyadh Khalaf, author of Yay! You’re Gay! Now What? , talks to Amy O’Connor.
In Ticket, Lucy Caldwell discusses the themes and trends behind Being Various, the new Faber anthology of Irish short stories which she has edited, while Paul Ring explores the reasons behind the huge surge of interest in audiobooks. We publish April’s New Irish Writing winning short story and poem; plus a new poem by Rita Ann Higgins.
Our reviews include Kit de Waal on the aforementioned Don’t Touch My Hair by Emma Dabiri; Kevin Gildea on White by Bret Easton Ellis; Anna Carey on A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of WWII’s Most Dangerous Spy, Virginia Hall by Sonia Purnell; Michael O’Loughlin on Lotharingia: A Personal History of Europe’s Lost Country by Simon Winder; Andrew Gallix on The Parisian by Isabella Hammad; Michael Cronin on The Capital by Robert Menasse; Sarah Gilmartin on Cape May by Chip Creek; and Sara Keating on the best new children’s books.
