Irish Times Books Editor Martin Doyle has launched a collection of interviews he has carried out with writers over the last 35 years.
A Hosting features 56 Irish writers including four of the five Irish Booker Prize winners – Roddy Doyle, John Banville, Anne Enright and Anna Burns – along with international bestselling authors Sally Rooney, Colum McCann and Colm Tóibín, among others.
The collection is a compendium of Doyle’s interviews from his time at the London-based Irish Post going back to 1991 to his interviews with writers for The Irish Times since he became Books Editor in 2018.
The well-known American novelist Richard Ford described Doyle as a “canny, immensely well-prepared, fastidious and intuitive interrogator”.
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Speaking at the launch in the Hodges Figgis bookshop, Doyle said there was no “overarching great theory” answer as to why Irish writing has been so successful in recent decades, but there are many interesting perspectives.
“If you want an answer to that question, there are many answers in this book,” he said.
“It gives you a kaleidoscope appreciation of the kind of variety that is in contemporary Irish writing.”
He quoted from a former Irish Times books editor turned novelist, John Banville, who believes we are living in a “world of lies” and therefore “in art, books and reviews those are places where the truth matters”.
Launching the book, TCD Professor of French Michael Cronin described A Hosting as an “extraordinary testimony to the vitality of Irish writing over the last 30 years – its range, versatility and distinction”.
“The publication will be an invaluable source in years to come for anyone who wants to understand what has been called, in certain circles, the second Irish literary renaissance.
“This collection is an intensely readable, highly engaging encounter with Irish writers and reading.”
