Dive Into *Irish* Writing's Depths

Hear in-depth discussions of recent Irish books that are worth reading, across a range of genres. Expert guests get to the heart of books you know and give you ideas of what contemporary Irish literature to read next. Season 2 covers a range of contemporary novels and also branches into short stories and history. Episodes explore established names in fiction such as John Boyne and Jan Carson, but also Patrick Holloway's debut and a recent account of the Great Hunger.

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Killian Quigley, an expert in oceanic humanities, is Chris's guest to discuss McCann's deep-sea adventure. Writer Anthony Fennell joins a vessel that repairs the information cables that run deep under the ocean, hoping for material for an article. Yet Fennell finds himself especially drawn to his fellow-Irishman, the expedition leader John Conway, both in thrall to and resentful of his corporate employers. Through Conway, Fennell understands the complexities of the undersea network: the cables a

Maebh Long - Kevin Barry fan and Eamon Cleary Chair of Irish Studies at the University of Otago - joins Chris to discuss The Heart in Winter. Barry's tale of lovers on the run is set in the American midwest in 1891 but looks back to Irish folkloric figures like Deirdre of the Sorrows. As Chris and Maebh discuss, Barry gives us a more agentive figure than the folkloric models in Polly Gillespie, the more streetwise character. If this makes Polly more modern, and even feminist, than the old Irish

This remarkable novel presents us with a speaker who is reluctant to tell her story. Our young narrator's crisis begins when a republican paramilitary known as the Milkman begins to pay her unwanted attention. Milkman's courtship resembles guerrilla warfare, and his unexplained attraction to Middle Sister befits the directionlessness of the IRA campaign in the late 1970s. Chris and guest Professor James Chandler (University of Chicago) navigate a book made complex by the narrator's reluctance to

Kevin Foster, an expert in war narratives at Monash University, helps Chris examine a quirky veteran: the hero of Old God's Time fought in the Malayan Emergency and is a retired Garda. He was also brought up in a Christian Brothers home: protagonist Tom Kettle has been through the wars, so to speak. Tom's past resurfaces when two policemen visit his home in Dalkey about a cold case, little realising how closely the mystery relates to Tom's personal tragedies. His attempts to start again seem nev

Chris's guest to discuss Intermezzo is Madeleine Callaghan (Maddy), Senior Lecturer in the School of English at the University of Sheffield. Maddy explains that Rooney's title alludes to the opening strategies of chess, in which players aim to set up the conditions they want for free play. But Rooney's characters find they can't arrange their lives the same way: they can neither identify the beginning nor put the pieces where they want. We meet Peter - torn between his sexual ideal in the younge