Martin Doyle

Martin Doyle

Martin Doyle is Books Editor

Joseph O’Connor: “Bram Stoker is the first Irish author I ever heard of, the first Irish author I loved.” Photograph: Eric Cabanis/AFP/Getty Images
Joe O’Connor: ‘The music of a novel is as important as the plot’

Author’s new novel Shadowplay is a complicated love affair featuring Dracula creator Bram Stoker, the first Irish writer he fell f(...)

Sarah Crossan: won the Carnegie Medal in 2016 for her verse novel, One. Photograph: Dara Mac Donaill
Books podcast: Sarah Crossan on her new YA novel Toffee and on being Laureate na nÓg

Carnegie Medal winner discusses her books and her identity as an Irish person in Britain

Last Stories by William Trevor is this week’s Irish Times Eason book offer

A sneak preview of this Saturday’s books pages

Jan Carson: has written a thoroughly captivating and well-paced novel that should hopefully earn her the international recognition she deserves. Photograph: Alan Betson
Jan Carson wins EU Prize for Literature Ireland 2019 for The Firestarters

Novel set in working-class Protestant Belfast explores seductiveness of lust and violence

Kelly McCaughrain: her Flying Tips for Flightless Birds has won the CBI Book of the Year, Eilís Dillon and Children’s Choice awards
Unprecedented hat-trick of awards for debut author Kelly McCaughrain

Flying Tips for Flightless Birds wins CBI Book of the Year, Eilís Dillon and Children’s Choice awards

Jokha Alharthi, winner of the 2019 Man Booker International Prize. Photograph: Peter Summers/Getty Images
Celestial Bodies author Jokha Alharthi wins Man Booker International Prize

Omani becomes first Arabic author to win award and shares £50,000 prize with translator Marilyn Booth

The Lost Letters of William Woolf by Helen Cullen is Irish Times Eason offer

A sneak preview of Saturday’s books pages

Norma MacMaster: shortlisted for the inaugural Paul Torday Memorial Prize, an award for a first novel by a writer over 60
81-year-old Irish debut novelist shortlisted for Society of Authors award

Church of Ireland minister Norma MacMaster, Sheila Llewellyn and Niall Bourke in running for prizes

Anna Mackmin
Desmond Elliott Prize shortlist revealed

Claire Adam, Michael Donkor and Anna Mackmin in running for £10,000 award

The Lost Letters of William Woolf by Helen Cullen is latest Irish Times Eason offer

A sneak preview of Saturday’s books pages

Saturday’s Irish Times offer at Eason is Connect by Julian Gough

A sneak preview of Saturday’s books pages

“A classically Irish novel in disguise, a dysfunctional family trying to deal with their traumas. It’s almost a John McGahern novel disguised as a near-future science-fiction novel set in Nevada.”
Connect by Julian Gough is this week’s Irish Times offer at Eason

A sneak preview of Saturday’s books pages

Journalist and author Lyra McKee. Photograph: Jess Lowe / AFP /Getty Images
Lyra McKee: Lost Girl of the Troubles

She made her name as a journalist covering the Troubles’ legacy and was set to win fame as an author

Lyra McKee: “a talented journalist and writer who was on the cusp of an incredible career”. Photograph: PA
Lyra McKee a ‘fearless seeker of truth’: fellow writers pay tribute

‘The people who took Lyra’s life are part of the past and will never be allowed to determine our future’

John Boyne: “I chose to write Sam and Jessica’s story as a deliberately imperfect one in order for me to highlight the mistakes people make and how important empathy is.” Photograph: Alan Betson
Puffin says it is ‘proud’ to publish John Boyne’s trans YA novel

A sneak preview of Saturday’s books pages

The judging panel: broadcaster and author James Naughtie; musical comedian and improviser Pippa Evans; Everyman’s Library publisher David Campbell; comedian Sindhu Vee; and vice president of the Hay Festival and director of National Trust Wales, Justin Albert
Roddy Doyle shortlisted for Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction

Nina Stibbe makes the shortlist for the third time with Reasons to be Cheerful

The Clockmaker’s Daughter by Kate Morton is this Saturday’s Irish Times Eason offer

A sneak preview of Saturday’s books pages

Rosemary Jenkinson: shortlisted for the EU Prize for Literature for Catholic Boy, published by Doire Press
Northern women dominate Irish €5,000 EU Prize for Literature shortlist

A sneak preview of tomorrow’s books pages

The 10 books shortlisted for the 2019 International Dublin Literary Award
Dublin Literary Award: Two Irish authors shortlisted for world’s most valuable books prize

Sally Rooney and Bernard MacLaverty shortlisted for the €100,000 prize

‘Brexit is aggressive and dangerously nostalgic. The UK is in for a brutal chastening’

Brexit Day: Eimear McBride, David Park, Sinéad Morrissey, Nick Laird and a host of Irish writers share their views

Novels about Lucia Joyce and Alan Turing win Republic of Consciousness Prize

Will Eaves and Alex Pheby share prize as founder rejects single winner convention

Colin Walsh, Hennessy New Irish Writer of the Year 2019
Colin Walsh is named Hennessy New Irish Writer of the Year 2019

Mike McCormack joins Hall of Fame as Hennessy ends sponsorship after 48 years

Donal Ryan’s From A Low and Quiet Sea, this week’s Eason offer, up for RSL Ondaatje Prize

A sneak preview of Saturday’s books pages

Paula Meehan with her partner, fellow poet Theo Dorgan. Photograph: Kenneth O Halloran
DCU confers poet Paula Meehan with honorary doctorate

A sneak preview of Saturday’s books pages

Kevin Breathnach: “His essays demonstrate not only an impressive depth of learning, but an even more necessary depth of feeling,” says Sally Rooney
The Irish Times Books Podcast: with Kevin Breathnach and New Irish Writing’s Ciaran Carty

Listen to the author of ‘Tunnel Vision’ and the man behind the Hennessy Literary Awards

Sarah Davis-Goff: has written an Irish feminist post-apocalyptic novel called Last Ones Left Alive
Best of Irish: 10 rising stars of Irish writing

In advance of St Patrick’s Day, we celebrate leading lights of our creative industries

€15,000 Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year shortlist revealed

A sneak preview of Saturday’s books pages

Danielle McLaughlin: “I’m a new writer, but not a young writer, and so it’s fortunate for me that the Windham-Campbell awards recognise the work of writers of all ages!”
Irish writer wins $165,000 Windham-Campbell Prize

Danielle McLaughlin gives her reaction to her huge success and reveals her next project

Polish author Olga Tokarczuk after winning the Man Booker International Prize 2018. Photograph: Matt Crossick/PA
Man Booker International Prize 2019 longlist dominated by women

Women make up eight of 13 longlisted authors, with all but two of the books published by independent houses

The best books by women of the 21st century

On International Women’s Day, writers and critics pick the best works by women since 2000

Norma McMaster: wrote her debut, Silence Under a Stone, in her 80s
Norma McMaster longlisted for Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award in her 80s

A sneak preview of Saturday’s books pages

A Ladder to the Sky by John Boyne is this weekend’s Irish Times offer at Eason

A sneak preview of Saturday’s books pages

Nicole Flattery: The White Review short story prize winner signed a six-figure deal for her first two books
Nicole Flattery on what inspired her debut, Show Them A Good Time

A sneak preview of Saturday’s books pages

Everything I Know About Love by Dolly Alderton: this week’s Irish Times Eason offer

A sneak preview of tomorrow’s books pages

Valentine’s Day: Impress them with these love poems

Michael Longley, Elaine Feeney and eight other Irish poets choose their favourite romantic verse

Too Close to Breathe by Olivia Kiernan is this week’s Irish Times book offer at Eason

A sneak preview of Saturday’s books pages and a round-up of the latest literary news

Too Close to Breathe is this week’s Irish Times Eason book offer

A sneak preview of Saturday’s books pages

Bart van Es who won the Costa Book of the Year Award for The Cut Out Girl. Photograph: Henry Nicholls/Reuters
Costa Book of the Year: The Cut Out Girl by Bart van Es wins £30,000 prize

Normal People by Sally Rooney had been favourite to win £30,000 prize

Emilie Pine, winner of the Irish Book of the Year 2018 for Notes to Self, at the An Post Irish Book Awards last November with her Newcomer of the Year Award. Photograph: Patrick Bolger
An Post Irish Book of the Year 2018 winner revealed

Public voted overall winner from list of individual awards announced in November

Catherine Ryan Howard: Edgar Award nominee
Catherine Ryan Howard’s The Liar’s Girl shortlisted for Edgar Award for Best Novel

A sneak preview of Saturday’s books pages and details of a great Eason offer

Buy Fire and Fury by Michael Woolf for just €4.99 with The Irish Times at Eason

A sneak preview of Saturday’s books pages

Napoleon I (1769 - 1821), or Napoleon Bonaparte, emperor of France, wearing a bicorne hat and holding a small telescope circa 1810. Photograph: Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Browser reviews: Napoleon, vampires and the girl who smiled beads

Harold Evans on concise and meaningful word, and a new insight into Cathal Brugha

Poet Aideen Henry.
Poem of the week: Hibernating

A new poem by Aideen Henry

If you buy The Irish Times in Eason’s this weekend you can also buy a copy of Dear Mrs Bird by AJ Pearce for just €4.99, a saving of €6.
The true story behind The Tattooist of Auschwitz, Ireland’s bestselling book of 2018

A sneak preview of tomorrow’s books pages

Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine, The Tattooist of Auschwitz and The Importance of Being Aisling, three of the bestselling books of the year in Ireland
Ireland’s bestselling books of 2018 revealed

Aisling novels by Emer McLysaght and Sarah Breen are biggest Irish success story

If you buy The Irish Times in Eason this weekend, you can save €5 and buy The Wife Between Us by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen for just €4.99
A sneak preview of Saturday’s books pages

Buy The Wife Between Us for €4.99 with The Irish Times in Eason this weekend

A sneak preview of Saturday’s books pages

Crime author Anthony J Quinn on finding refuge in books growing up near the Border

Breandán Mac Suibhne: “It is impossible not to be moved by the humanity with which he writes of his ancestors and their neighbours, or to be provoked by his unconventional epic.” Photograph: Richard Wayman
Breandán Mac Suibhne wins €10,000 Michel Déon Prize for Non-Fiction

‘The End of Outrage’ is about aftermath of Famine in historian’s Donegal community

The best reads of 2018 from Ireland and beyond
Books of 2018: writers pick their favourite novels and non-fiction

From Anna Burns’s Milkman to Diarmaid Ferriter's On the Edge, it’s been a strong year

Irish Novel of the Year winner Sally Rooney and Man Booker Prize winner Anna Burns at the An Post Irish Book Awards. Photograph: Patrick Bolger
Sally Rooney conquers all as boxers and gamblers bounce back in sports awards

A sneak preview of Saturday’s books pages

Sally Rooney, author of Normal People. Photograph: Cyril Byrne/The Irish Times
Sally Rooney and Donal Ryan shortlisted for Costa Novel Award

70-year-old shortlisted for First Novel Award. Judges include RTÉ’s Rick O’Shea

A collage of the 141 longlisted titles
International Dublin Literary Award: 10 Irish books on 2019 longlist

Exit West by Mohsin Hamid leads nominations for world’s most valuable literary prize

Buy ‘Educated’ by Tara Westover for €4.99 at Eason with ‘The Irish Times’ this Saturday

John Boyne, Cecelia Ahern and Matt Cooper, three of the authors shorltisted for the 2018 An Post Irish Book Awards. Photograph: Patrick Bolger
An Post Irish Book Awards give Man Booker winner stamp of approval

Emilie Pine, John Boyne, Dervla McTiernan and Liz Nugent shortlisted in two categories

A sneak preview of Saturday’s books pages

Save €5 on ‘The Innocent Wife’ by Amy Lloyd when you buy Saturday’s Irish Times’ in Eason

Michael Connelly will open Dublin’s Murder One crime writingh festival with a special preview event on October 28th in City Hall with Declan Burke moderating. Sadly it is sold out, but you can read his interview with Declan Hughes in The Irish Times this Saturday. Photograph: Beowulf Sheehan
Murder One, Shaw and Montague tributes, Irish Book Week and John Boyne scholarship

A round-up of Irish book news and events

Anna Burns, winner of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction for her novel Milkman. Photograph: EPA/Facundo Arrizabalaga
Anna Burns: from rank outsider to No 1 bestseller

A sneak preview of tomorrow’s books pages

Nick Laird. Photograph: Roberto Ricciuti/Getty Images
Two Irish poets shortlisted for £25,000 TS Eliot Prize

Ailbhe Darcy and Nick Laird on 10-strong list picked by Sinéad Morrissey-led panel

Anna Burns holds her book ‘Milkman’ during a photocall at the Royal Festival Hall in London for the 2018 Man Booker Prize. Photograph: Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty Images
Anna Burns: From relative unknown to Man Booker prize winner

‘Milkman’ author has been praised for her ‘dazzingly inventive’ writing approach

Anna Burns, whose winning novel is set at the height of the Troubles. Photograph: Eleni Stefano
Man Booker Prize: Belfast writer Anna Burns wins for ‘Milkman’

First Irish writer to win prestigious £50,000 award since Anne Enright in 2007

The Man Booker Prize 2018 shortlist. Photograph: Yui Mok/PA Wire
Man Booker prize 2018: ‘Milkman’ by Anna Burns is top seller on shortlist

Richard Powers is favourite to win elite prize tonight but Belfast’s Anna Burns is top seller

John Boyne and Markus Zusack in Sydney
A sneak preview of Saturday’s books pages

‘The Book Thief’ author Markus Zusak talks to John Boyne about his new novel

John Boyne in his Rathfarnham home. Photograph: Alan Betson
John Boyne wins Goldsboro Books prize for ‘The Heart’s Invisible Furies’

£2,000 prize for ‘compelling storytelling with brilliant characterisation and a distinct voice’

The dusters to dustjackets transformation of part-time Trinity College Dublin cleaner Caitriona Lally to winner of this year’s €10,000 Rooney Prize for Irish Literature for emerging Irish writers became one of this week’s most popular stories. Photograph: Alan Betson
Caitriona Lally cleans up at this year’s Rooney Prize ceremony

A sneak preview of Saturday’s books pages

Caitriona Lally, winner of the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature 2018 for emerging Irish writers at Trinity College Dublin today. Photograph: Paul Sharp / SHARPPIX
Caitriona Lally wins major literary prize in Trinity (where she works as a cleaner)

Author awarded €10,000 Rooney Prize for Irish Literature 2018 for debut novel ‘Eggshells’

Clockwise from top left: Mike McCormack, Sara Baume, Colin Barrett, Paul McVeigh, Lisa McInerney, Conor O’Callaghan, Alan McMonagle, Sally Rooney. Photographs: John Minihan
Carrying the song and story of Irish writing all over the world

Literature Ireland’s First Lines portraits, by John Minihan, celebrate the latest wave of Irish authors

Man Booker shortlist brings mixed fortunes for Irish authors

A sneak preview of Saturday’s books pages

Anna Burns, author of Milkman. Photograph: Eleni Stefanou Anna Burns, author of Milkman. Photograph: Eleni Stefanou
Man Booker Prize: Anna Burns shortlisted for ‘Milkman’

Fellow longlisted Irish authors Sally Rooney and Donal Ryan fail to make the cut

Sally Rooney, author of Normal People. Photograph: Cyril Byrne
Sales and acclaim make Sally Rooney’s ‘Normal People’ Man Booker Prize favourite

Three Irish writers hope to make tomorrow’s shortlist for prestigious £50,000 award

Anna Burns, perhaps the least well-known of the three Irish authors on the longlist, despite her debut, No Bones, being shortlisted for the Orange Prize back in 2002
A look ahead to next week’s Man Booker shortlist

A sneak preview of Saturday’s books pages

Caoilinn Hughes: debut novel Orchid & the Wasp, has been well received
Debut author wins Moth Short Story Prize

A sneak preview of Saturday’s books pages

Wendy Erksine: explores the meanings of home in her debut short story collection Sweet Home, out soon from Stinging Fly Press. PHOTOGRAPH: KHARA PRINGLE
Nuala O’Connor and Wendy Erskine on their new books, and the centenary of a classic

A sneak preview of Saturday’s books pages

Sally Rooney: “I’m looking forward to the challenge of working in a new form, and of thinking about these characters and their lives in new ways.” Photograph: Cyril Byrne
Sally Rooney and Cecelia Ahern set for TV stardom

A sneak preview of Saturday’s books pages

If you buy The Irish Times on Saturday in Eason’s, you can purchase The Choice by Edith Eger for €4.99, a saving of €6
Edith Eger book offer with The Irish Times this Saturday

A sneak preview of Saturday’s books pages

A worker on a skyscraper in Xiamen, China: the “Capability Triad” is a sweet spot of economic progress where skill development, the improved production of goods and organisational change overlap. Photograph: Reuters
How Growth Really Happens: Reflecting on the making of economic miracles
  • Books
  • August 4, 2018, 06:00

Insightful and expansive study of economic growth is a little heavy on academic language

The judges for the 2018 Man Booker Prize (from left) Val McDermid, Leanne Shapton, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Leo Robson and Jacqueline Rose. Photograph: Man Booker Prize/PA
Three Irish longlisted for Man Booker Prize

A sneak preview of Saturday’s books pages

Avedis Hadjian seeks out people in the villages and towns of Western Armenia, chatting to anyone who will talk to him.
Secret Nation review: insight into the invisible Armenians in Turkey

Avedis Hadjian presents a genocide-scarred culture where Armenians deny their identity

Photograph: iStock/Getty
Books for the beach – and the brain – this summer

John Banville, Kathleen MacMahon, John Boyne, Joseph O’Connor and more on what they’ll be reading

Irish Times Africa Day writing competition winners Oluwasegun Seriki and Lara El-Kadi receive their prizes at The Irish Times today. Photograph: Lorraine O’Sullivan
Irish Times Africa Day writing competition winning entries

Read the work of winners Lara El-Kadi, Natasha Sutton and Oluwasegun Seriki

A mural in Derry of Annette McGavigan, who was killed age 14 in 1971. Photograph: courtesy of McGavigan family
Children of the Rising author Joe Duffy to co-author book on Troubles’ child victims

Duffy and co-writer Freya McClements appeal for families’ help to make book complete

Hubert Butler in 1987: “This new essay prize is founded to recognize Butler’s achievement in intellectual history, and to encourage the kind of economical but substantial essay-writing which he perfected.” Photograph: Matt Kavanagh
Hubert Butler Essay Prize launched

Prize commemorates great Irish writer and humanitarian and promotes essay-writing

Desmond Elliott Prize winner Preti Taneja, author of We That Are Young. Photograph: Louise Haywood-Schiefer/ Desmond Elliott Prize/PA
Preti Taneja wins Desmond Elliott Prize

A sneak preview of Saturday's books pages

Mike McCormack with the 2018 International Dublin Literary Award. Photograph: Chris Bellew / Fennell Photography
Mike McCormack wins International Dublin Literary Award

Valerie O’Riordan, Chris Connolly and Anne Patterson on Society of Authors award shortlists

Kamila Shamsie, winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Photograph: Getty Images
Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire wins Women’s Prize for Fiction

What’s coming up in Saturday’s books pages

Paul Lynch. Photograph: Bryan O’Brien
Paul Lynch’s ‘Grace’ wins Irish Novel of the Year Award

A sneak preview of Saturday’s books pages

Paul Lynch: Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award winner. Photograph: Bryan O’Brien
‘Grace’ by Paul Lynch wins Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award

Colette Bryce’s ‘Selected Poems’ wins Pigott Poetry Prize at Listowel Writers’ Week

Olga Tokarczuk: trained as a psychologist at the University of Warsaw, and her interest in Jung continues to influence her work. Photograph: Jacek Kolodziejski
Man Booker International Prize 2018: Olga Tokarczuk wins £50,000 award

Author of the ‘beguilingly experimental’ Flights becomes first Pole to take prize

President Michael D Higgins presents Sarah Crossan with her laureate’s medal as shje became the fifth Laureate na nÓg today. Photograph: Maxwells
Sarah Crossan is appointed Laureate na nÓg

Lisa McInerney with her 2016 Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction. Photograph: Ian West/PA
Lisa McInerney is jointly awarded £10,000 Encore Award

Mark O’Connell
Mark O’Connell wins £30,000 Wellcome Book Prize

Sinéad Gleeson on The Long Gaze Back: The Irish Times Book Club podcast

Our conversation ranged over literary archaeology to her championing of new voices and the cultural and social context surrounding(...)

Women’s Prize shortlist and Trinity’s translators

What’s coming up in Saturday’s books pages

German playwright Roland Schimmelpfennig’s debut novel explores a Europe in a state of flux.
One Clear Ice-Cold January Morning at the Beginning of the Twenty-First Century review – highly original, hypnotic work

Readers seeking striking European voices should embrace this novel

Fergal Keane: 'A legendary journalist who is also a first-rate historian and a marvellous writer.'
Fergal Keane wins Christopher Ewart-Biggs memorial prize for ‘Wounds’

Marianne Elliott awarded special £5,000 prize for advancing understanding of Irish history in Britain

Edna O’Brien at her home in London in 2006: “Writing isn’t elitist: it’s the deepest thing we have. It’s as essential as breathing.” Photograph: Frank Miller
Arise Dame Edna: Irish author Edna O’Brien is made a DBE

Author, 88, from Co Clare has enjoyed a long and distinguished career since making her name with The Country Girls in 1962

The winner will be announced at the opening ceremony of Listowel Writers’ Week on May 30th.
Bernard MacLaverty and Sally Rooney on shortlist for Irish Novel of the Year

'Midwinter Break' and 'Conversations With Friends' are two of five books on Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award shortlist

Manus Boyle Tobin: “This story was inspired by glimpses and snapshots of Dublin and its people. By the housing crisis, homelessness and isolation.”
Manus Boyle Tobin is named Hennessy New Irish Writer of the Year

Aaron Finnegan and Louise G Cole win awards and Bernard MacLaverty inducted into Hall of Fame

Mark O’Connell's debut book 'manages to be simultaneously hilarious, touching and utterly humane'. Photograph: Rich Gilligan
Mark O’Connell on £30,000 Wellcome Book Prize shortlist

Rivals include Granta publisher Sigrid Rausing and Nigerian novelist Ayobami Adebayo

Matt Killeen’s “Orphan Monster Spy” (Usborne, £7.99) takes us back in time to the outbreak of the second World War
YA fiction reviews: from suffragettes to spies

New releases make the most of International Women’s Day with plenty of female stories

This is Ireland: 12 books that capture the Ireland of now
Want to know about Ireland now? Here are the books to read

A Minister, a historian and 13 Irish writers select the modern works - from Ross O'Carroll-Kelly to Donal Ryan - that capture for (...)

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