Author of the Month: Colm Tóibín
Selected by the Bookshop
Our Author of the Month for September is the novelist, essayist, poet and travel writer Colm Tóibín.
His many books take us from Ireland to Brooklyn, Argentina, Catalonia and beyond, and he has been for many years a contributor, and contributing editor, to the London Review of Books. His most recent and highly acclaimed book is The Magician, a marvellous evocation of the life of Thomas Mann. Other works explore sexuality, emigration, family relationships and a good deal else besides.
Browse our booklist here, and come and meet the books in person at Bury Place.
From the publisher:
THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLER SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2022 RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZEFrom one of our greatest living writers comes a sweeping novel of unrequited love and exile, war and family.The Magician tells the story of Thomas Mann, whose…
From the publisher:
Winner of the David Cohen Prize for Literature 2021From the highly acclaimed author of Brooklyn, Colm Tóibín's first collection of poetry explores sexuality, religion and belonging through a modern lens.Fans of Colm…
From the publisher:
A Guest at the Feast uncovers the places where politics and poetics meet, where life and fiction overlap, where one can be inside writing and also outside of it.From the melancholy and amusement within the work of the writer John…
From the publisher:
Colm Toibin's Brooklyn is a devastating story of love, loss and one woman's terrible choice between duty and personal freedom. It is Ireland in the early 1950s and for Eilis Lacey, as for so many young Irish girls, opportunities are scarce.…
From the publisher:
THE TOP 10 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER'Unforgettable' Mary Beard'They cut her hair before they dragged her to the place of sacrifice. Her mouth was gagged to stop her cursing her father, her cowardly, two-tongued father. Nonetheless, they heard…
From the publisher:
An intimate study of three of Ireland's greatest writers from one of its best-loved contemporary voices__________________'A father...is a necessary evil.' Stephen Dedalus in UlyssesIn Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know Colm Toibin takes three of…
From the publisher:
With an introduction by award-winning novelist Tessa Hadley In January 1895 Henry James anticipates the opening of his first play, Guy Domville, in London. The production fails, and he returns, chastened and humiliated, to his writing desk.…
From the publisher:
In this book, novelist Colm Toibin offers a deeply personal introduction to the work and life of one of his most important literary influences--the American poet Elizabeth Bishop. Ranging across her poetry, prose, letters, and biography,…
From the publisher:
Colm Toibin's The Heather Blazing details the life of Eamon Redmond, a judge in Ireland's high court, a man remote from his wife, his son and daughter and, at least outwardly, from his own childhood. The life he has built for himself,…
From the publisher:
In the captivating stories that make up The Empty Family Colm Toibin delineates with a tender and unique sensibility lives of unspoken or unconscious longing, of individuals, often willingly, cast adrift from their history. 'I imagined…
From the publisher:
From Colm Toibin comes New Ways to Kill Your Mother, a fabulously entertaining book about writers and their families.In this wonderfully entertaining and enlightening collection, Colm Toibin not only explores the often tense relationship…
From the publisher:
* * * Shortlisted for the 2014 Costa Novel Awards and the 2015 Folio Prize * * * Nora Webster is the heartbreaking new novel from one of the greatest novelists writing today.It is the late 1960s in Ireland. Nora Webster is living in a small…
From the publisher:
In the summer after the Anglo-Irish Agreement, when tension was high in Northern Ireland, Colm Toibin walked along the border from Derry to Newry. Bad Blood is a stark and evocative account of this journey through fear and hatred, and a…
From the publisher:
SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2013Colm Toibin's The Testament of Mary is the moving story of the Virgin Mary, told by a novelist famous for writing brilliantly about the family.From the author of Brooklyn, in a voice that is both…
From the publisher:
In Love in a Dark Time, Colm Toibin looks at the life and work of some of the greatest and most influential artists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His subjects range from figures such as Oscar Wilde, born in the 1850s, to Pedro…
From the publisher:
Colm Toibin's Mothers and Sons is a sensitive and beautifully written meditation on the dramas surrounding this most elemental of relationships. Psychologically intricate and emotionally incisive, each finely wrought story teases out the…
From the publisher:
With an introduction by Roy FosterA classic work of Irish literature, this award-winning novel is an exploration of love, art and identity.This was the night train to Barcelona, some hours before the dawn. This was 1950, late September. I…
From the publisher:
A love story full of honesty and truth, Colm Toibin portrays a difficult relationship during dark times.Richard Garay lives alone with his mother, hiding his sexuality from her and from those around him. Stifled by a job he despises, he…
From the publisher:
Colm Toibin's Homage to Barcelona celebrates one of Europe's greatest cities - a cosmopolitan hub of vibrant architecture, art, culture and nightlife. It moves from the story of the city's founding and its huge expansion in the nineteenth…
From the publisher:
Set in Ireland in the 1990s, Colm Toibin's The Blackwater Lightship tells the story of the Devereux family. Dora Devereux, her daughter Lily and her granddaughter Helen - have come together after years of strife and reached an uneasy truce.…
From the publisher:
Colm Toibin's Lady Gregory's Toothbrush is a beautiful insight into the life of outspoken Irishwoman, Augusta Gregory.A remarkable figure in Celtic history, she was married to an MP and land-owner, yet retained an unprecedented independence…
From the publisher:
Between 1990 and 1994, Colm Toibin made a series of trips through Catholic Europe. His journey led him into close contact with people from all walks of life, from priests to politicians, from the intellectually open to the spiritually…
From the publisher:
This book collects, for the first time, Colm Toibin's critical essays on Henry James. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize for his novel about James's life, The Master, Toibin brilliantly analyzes James from a novelist's point of view. Known…
From the publisher:
Pale Sister was first produced by Audible and the Gate Theatre and had its World Première onstage at the Gate Theatre, Dublin, on 31 October 2019.I can hear my sister laugh at the thought of truth.Colm…