More money spent on books in 2023 than ever before

Gerald Murnane is a perennial contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature. The Australian author talks to John Self about his career. Evie Woods, pen name of the Galway author Evie Gaughan, has sold more than half a million copies worldwide of her novel The Lost Bookshop. She talks to Edel Coffey. Henrietta McKervey visits the new Book of Kells exhibition at Trinity College. And there is a Q&A with Kelly McCaughrain about her new YA novel, Little Bang.

Reviews are Eamon Maher on The Oxford Handbook of Religion in Modern Ireland edited by Gladys Ganiel and Andrew R Holmes; Kathleen McNamee on Perfectly Imperfect by Ellen Keane; Declan O’Driscoll on the best new translations; Dan O’Brien on Industry and Policy in Independent Ireland, 1922-1972 by Frank Barry; Martina Evans on The Solace of Artemis by Paula Meehan; Paul Clements on Errigal: Sacred Mountain by Cathal Ó Searcaigh and Road to Glenlough by Christy Gillespie; Roslyn Fuller on The Bill Gates Problem: Reckoning with the Myth of the Good Billionaire; Brian Maye on William Sharman Crawford and Ulster Radicalism by Peter Gray; Jessica Traynor on Lavinia Greenlaw’s The Vast Extent; Charleen Hurtubise on Calling for a Blanket Dance by Oscar Hokeah; and Sarah Gilmartin on How About My Friends by Hisham Matar.

A Lesson in Malice by Catherine Kirwan is this weekend’s Irish Times Eason offer. You can buy it for €5.99, a €5 saving, with your paper at any branch.

*

Caoilinn Hughes: ‘I suppose it’s in our DNA, that instinct to leave and to move’

---

Local history: a Wicklow tea room, ambitious Kennedys, New Quay secrets and Cork curiosities

---

Translated fiction: Memory, history and the question of ‘sampling’ from other novels

---

The Summer We Crossed Europe in the Rain; Ireland 1970-2020; Car Bombs and Barrack Busters

---

More money was spent on books in Ireland in 2023 than ever before, according to Nielsen Bookscan, with total sales reaching nearly €171 million, €961,000 ahead of 2022′s peak. Volume sales added up to 13.1 million books, down 2 per cent on 2022. With value once again growing at a stronger rate than volume, the average price paid for print books went from €12.71 to €13.08, the highest on record. 2023 marks the tenth year in a row of value growth for the Irish book market, with sales improving by €64 million since 2014, and while volume fell behind over the last three years, it’s up 3.5 million in that 10-year period. Fiction also set a new lifetime high for value sales, with volume back above 4 million for the first time since 2010, and nonfiction managed slight value growth as well, with children’s down for both measures.

The library system of Gaza, like life itself in Gaza, has been brutally impacted by the past three months of bombing. The founder of the Edward Said Libraries in Gaza is Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha, and he has got together with Boston bookstore Brookline Booksmith to host a worldwide virtual fundraiser this Saturday, January 6th, in support of libraries and access to literature in the decimated Strip. Even now – especially now.

The reading takes place at 5pm Irish time (12 noon EST), and will feature a powerful line-up of international writers including Mosab Abu Toha himself; Fatima Bhutto; Ilya Kaminsky; Ha Jin; Eileen Myles; Shuchi Saraswat and the Irish poet Damian Gorman. Gorman says, “We know that what we are doing is a drop in the ocean. But we feel that this particular drop contains some very vital properties. Libraries in Gaza, as in any place, are incubators of life itself.”

Access to the reading is either by registration here or via the Brookline Booksmith YouTube page. Access to the reading is free, but donations are very welcome. You will receive information as to how to donate when you register or join via YouTube.

All funds will be used to replace destroyed stock in the libraries.