Happy St Patrick’s Day to every one of you, far and wide.
And here’s our bookish Irish flag in honour of the day, pieced together using just a few of our green, white and orange books.
Here is the full list of titles featured in our St Patrick’s Day ‘flag’:
Poetry and Privacy: Questioning Public Interpretations of Contemporary British and Irish Poetry;
The Ivy Hides the Fig-Ripe Duchess;
The Scattering;
The Dragon and the Crescent;
Crossing Over;
Masculine Happiness;
Bilbao – New York – Bilbao;
The Woman at the Window;
All the Souls;
The Hitting Game;
Dirt Roads;
Big Low Tide;
Zen-Cymru;
Christmas in Wales;
The Shop;
If You Fall I Will Catch You;
Midas’ Daughter;
Eros Proposes a Toast;
The Visitations;
Playing House;
Midnight, Dhaka;
Daniel’s Beetles.
We have been lucky enough to add some great Irish and Ireland-based authors to our list over the years who have written some gorgeous books.
Of special mention (and visible in the ‘flag’, above) is Jaki McCarrick’s The Scattering, a collection of nineteen stories, many of which are set on the Irish border. One of the stories ‘The Visit’ won the Wasafiri Prize for new fiction, and many have been published to much acclaim in literary magazines.
Another Irish voice that has recently appeared is Helen Blackhurst. Her debut novel Swimming on Dry Land, which follows a family’s quest for a new life in the Australian outback (as well as their search for missing 4-year-old daughter Georgie), was released just before Christmas.
In Liam Carson’s family memoir Call Mother a Lonely Field, the author’s Irish-speaking, West Belfast childhood is described through still-present echoes of the Second World War, dystopian science fiction, American comic books and punk rock. The memoir was shortlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize 2013.
We hope you enjoy St Patrick’s Day!
