New Island Books DAC – förlag

A Divided Paradise: An Irishman in the Holy Land is a vivid account of ordinary life in one of the world''s most contested and volatile regions. Award winning journalist David Lynch brings to life stories from both the Palestinian and Israeli street. From coming under fire in the occupied West Bank, to visiting the ''First Irish Pub in Palestine'', to talking Armageddon with young dispirited Israelis in Tel Aviv, personal experiences are interwoven with broad historical analysis.A provocative introduction to the political and personal tragedy suffered by the Palestinian people and the continuing wider Middle Eastern conflict.

The story of Michael Dwyer - the Wicklow Chief - a revolutionary idealist, an inspirational guerrilla leader, and a violent alcoholic.From his humble beginnings as a Wicklow farmer, the story of Dwyer''s life takes him from Ireland to Australia, from poverty to wealth, and from incarceration to freedom - from everybody but himself.This gripping and moving account of Dwyer''s life will stay with you long after you have turned the final page.

A stunning and critically praised novel by acclaimed Irish writer Carlo Gébler, this book addresses the miscarriages of justice endemic in the Irish judicial system. On a wet November morning in 1940, Harry Gleeson discovered the body of Moll McCarthy in a field near the village of New Inn, Co. Tipperary. She had been shot twice with a shotgun, once in the face… In tracing Moll''s journey to this tragic end, Carlo Gébler''s novel - which is based on the real story - explores how the local police fabricated their case against Harry Gleeson, and why an entire community looked away as the Irish judicial system prosecuted, convicted and condemned to death an innocent man. Gleeson was hanged in Mountjoy prison in April 1941. As of January 2015, Harry Gleeson has been cleared of murder and is now the first recipient of posthumous pardon in Ireland.

Plagued by his anarchic mother, tormented by his sister, abused by his brain-damaged brother, and generally driven to despair by everyone, Frankie Griffin, the Last of the High Kings of Tara, is going to embark on a coming-of-age story with a difference... Set during the summer of punk in Howth, a small fishing town in North Country Dublin, the riotously funny The Last of the High Kings tells Frankie''s story as he tries to deal with his eccentric family and come to terms with his life. The Last of the High Kings was made into a Hollywood movie starring Gabriel Byrne, Jared Leto, Stephen Rea and Christina Ricci in 1996. First published in 1991, New Island''s Modern Irish Classics series brings this hilarious novel to a new generation of readers.

The first book in a pacey and evocative detective series set in Victorian Dublin. In the 1880s the DMP classified crime in two distinct classes. Political crimes were ''special'', whereas theft, robbery and even murder, no matter how terrible, were ''ordinary''. Dublin, June 1887: the mutilated bodies of a man and a child are discovered in Phoenix Park and Detective Sergeant Joe Swallow steps up to investigate. Cynical and tired, Swallow is a man living on past successes in need of a win. In the background, the city is sweltering in a long summer heatwave, a potential gangland war is simmering as the chief lieutenants of a dying crime boss size each other up and the castle administration want the celebration of Queen Victoria s Golden jubilee to pass off without complication. Underneath it all, the growing threat of anti-British radicals is never far away. With the Land War at its height, the priority is to contain special crime. But these murders appear to be ordinary and thus of lesser priority. When the evidence suggests high-level involvement, and as the body count increases, Swallow must navigate the waters of foolish superiors, political directives and frayed tempers to investigate the crime, find the true murderer and deliver justice. A June Of Ordinary Murders captures the life and essence of Dublin in the 1880s and draws the reader on a thrilling journey of murder and intrigue.

In Mother America and Other Stories mothers tattoo their children and abduct them; they act as surrogates and they use charms to cure childhood illnesses. The story ''Letters'' sees an Irish mother cling to love of her son, though he abandoned her in New York, where loneliness is alleviated only by letters she cannot read. In ''Queen of Tattoo'', Lydia, the tattooed lady from the Groucho Marx song, tries to understand why her son is a bad man. Set in Ireland and America, as well as Paris, Rome and Mexico, these stories map the lives of parents and the boundaries they cross. O''Connor''s sinewy prose dazzles as she exposes the follies of motherhood as well as its triumphs. Once again she spotlights the contradictions and fierce loves that shake up the life of the family.

In a history book that looks at things from a different angle, Come Here To Me!: Dublin''s Other History discusses everything from punk music and stand-up comedy venues to pirate radio stations and drug use in Dublin city. It talks about fire-fighters, newspaper boys, street gangs, gay bars and footballers, as well as our changing attitudes to feminism and sex . . .Dublin''s Social History, as seen through the eyes of these historians, is to be found hidden in the small details everywhere, from the design of its shopfronts to the graffiti scribbled on the walls of its pubs. In this beautifully illustrated hardback, Donal Fallon, Sam McGrath, and Ciarán Murray bring the best of their hugely popular blog, Come Here To Me: Dublin Life & Culture, to a new audience. Bringing a fresh, new perspective to their historical snapshots of the life of Dublin city, the authors have written dozens of new articles for this publication.The book also features new images, alongside its healthy dose of bizarre and wonderful tales of Dublin''s hidden history.

In Autumn 2011 Fishamble: The New Play Company, in partnership with the Irish Times, launched ''Tiny Plays for Ireland'', commissioning short works by some of Ireland''s best-loved writers and calling for submissions of tiny dramas from the public.There was an overwhelming response, with over 1,700 submissions received, reflecting the imagination, creativity and psyche of the nation. The result was an evening of plays by Maeve Binchy, Dermot Bolger, Colum McCann, Rosaleen McDonagh, Sean McLoughlin, Ardal O''Hanlon, Tom Swift and Michael West, presented alongside a selection of those submitted by members of the public.''Tiny Plays For Ireland'' offers a vivid glimpse of contemporary Ireland, as seen through a host of perspectives.

With Hawks, Peter Hollywood has crafted a gripping collection of stories which reflects the changing face of Northern Ireland. While Northern Ireland is in the process of a gradual transformation into another place, despite the glitz on the surface, it is yet to arrive. Haunted by the collective memory of moments shared, it could embrace a bright future, or retain the darker colours of its past In clear, elegant and sombre prose, though never beyond humour, emotion and feeling, Hollywood charts the movements towards this new world with gusto.

As we close out the decade of centenaries, and approach a re-appraisal of the Civil War our nation has never truly confronted, John Dorney''s engaging history of those years – now in paperback for the first time – is a must read.Within the space of just a dozen years, Ireland was completely transformed. From being a superficially loyal part of the British Empire, it emerged as a self-governing state. How and why did Ireland go from welcoming royalty in 1912 to independence in 1922?In this exciting new updated edition, drawing on new research and the most recent material in this field, John Dorney, historian and editor of The Irish Story website, examines the roots of the revolution, using the experiences of the men and women of the time.

The history of the Middle Ages [in Ireland] is so neglected that the only figure of renown is Strongbow, the man who led the Norman Invasion of Ireland in the twelfth century … There is little written about the lives of majority of men, who held no title or land, and even less about women … Indeed, so neglected are these people in history that many of the stories and people recounted … haven''t been heard of in centuries. In a society born of conquest, beset with famines and plagues, and where the staples of life were everything from spies and corruption to witch trials and warfare, life in medieval Ireland was seldom dull. In Life in Medieval Ireland, Finbar Dwyer offers a unique portrait of life as it was lived in medieval Ireland. Against the backdrop of what was often a violent and chaotic period of history, Dwyer explores the personal stories of those whose recollections have been preserved, finding in them continual relevance and human interest.

A child wandering alone through a racecourse; an elderly lady grasping at a thread of memory; a young girl watching prostitutes from her window as they ply their trade; an Indian taxi driver living in his cab: these are some of the fractured lives and fragile hearts we meet in The House on Parkgate Street and Other Dublin Stories. Set in various eras, at various times of life, each story is a unique and perfectly carved gem embedded in the city of Dublin. With her customary wit and empathy, Christine Dwyer Hickey brings us an intimate portrayal of the city and some of its people in these beautifully observed stories, collected here for the first time.

At once brazen and terrified, Sarah Maria Griffin''s beautifully written memoir, Not Lost: A Story About Leaving Home, opens a doorway into the interior life of the Celtic Tiger Cubs who have left Ireland to escape the recession and in search of prosperity. Thrown into life 5,000 miles away from home, Sarah''s tale echoes that of many of her generation forced to forge new lives and build new homes on distant shores. She describes in open, honest, detail her experience of her first year in San Francisco, a year of struggle and strife, of newness and oddness of adventure and excitement, of loneliness and despair, but also of incredible happiness and joy. Not Lost is a book about growing up, about friendship, about love, about life and living it well. It is by turns heartbreaking, funny, tender and gutsy, it is assured but never cocky and marks Sarah Maria Griffin as one of the major voices of her generation.

In the Curragh Army Camp in County Kildare, a senior British General and his officers had threatened to resign rather than deploy their forces to Ulster in response to threats from the Protestant populations there refusing to accept Home Rule. This was the so called Curragh Mutiny, which precipitated the most serious crisis of civilmilitary relations in modern British history. In this engaging and enjoyable new history of those events, Paul O''Brien explores the why and the how of those strange days as well as putting the events in a wider context and bringing home to the modern reader just how close to civil war the British Empire stood in 1914.

No monument in the history of Ireland has proven quite as controversial as the Nelson Pillar on O''Connell Street. Erected in the early 19th century, the column in honour of Admiral Horatio Nelson was ultimately blown to pieces by a bomb in 1966, planted by members of a left-wing republican faction. The story of the Pillar and its location involves many famous Dublin names and characters, from Arthur Guinness to James Joyce, and W. B. Yeats to The Dubliners. This book examines the life of the Nelson Pillar site, looking at what was there before the monument as well as the afterlife of the Pillar, and brings the story right up to its eventual replacement with the Spire of Light.

''John Le Carré meets Bill Bryson with a touch of Yes Minister'' - the Irish TimesEamon Delaney''s controversial Number 1 bestselling exposé of backstage life at the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs.From the lonely nights at the Soviet Desk to glamorous soirées during Ireland''s presidency of the emerging European Union, Eamon Delaney kept his ear to the ground - a useful skill when wedged precariously between Iran, Iraq and Israel at the UN General Assembly. And more useful still when, at the Irish Consulate, he travelled the strange world of Irish America, doing battle with radical nationalists and having to indulge in a painful amount of céilí dancing...And then there was Northern Ireland, and the Peace Process of 1993-1995, where no amount of dining, spying and manipulation was spared in the pursuit of the ultimate goal - the greater good of officialdom.Hilarious and at times deadly serious, An Accidental Diplomat offers a wry and irreverant view of the backstage dealings at foreign affairs. When diplomacy turned the other cheek, Eamon Delaney kept his eyes peeled... luckily for us, he was taking notes.

Lillis leaves behind 1980s Dublin for a summer job working at a lodge in a small lochside village in the Scottish Highlands. Leaving Dublin is a way to escape her sorrow and despair following the death of her boyfriend and a testy relationship with her mother, Verity. In Scotland she encounters love and excitement but when a series of unexpected events turn her new found life on its head, she is forced to make a life-changing decision, one that will stay with her for her whole life. The Closet of Savage Mementos is drawn directly from the author''s own experiences and explores heartbreak, loss, motherhood and adoption in a gripping narrative and the same expressive, emotive and exciting prose we have come to expect of Nuala O''Connor.

What seems like a routine job for matchmaker Michael Gilmour in a small 1960s Northern Irish town becomes something very much more when events take an unexpected turn. The brothers Kane have an idea for their matches that will set tongues wagging, light the fires of jealousy in more than one heart and open the door to tragedy. The Lonesome Heart is Angry explores life in a small town and the darker side of the human condition. It doesn''t shy away from the gossip, the fear, the violence and desperation that can build up inside people and behind closed doors. Set in Castlemartin, home of the Playboys who featured in Paul Charles'' The Last Dance, The Lonesome Heart is Angry is a gripping novel that will keep you reading until the last page.

Paris 1972. Eileen Gray, Irish designer and architect now in her 90s, is the reluctant darling of the international media, second time around. After years of living in reclusive oblivion the record breaking price paid for her Destiny screen in the Doucet sale has her back in the news. Bruce Chatwin, young, rising star of Fleet Street, spends two hours closeted with her in her apartment. Why wasn''t the interview published? What happened between Eileen Gray and Bruce Chatwin that afternoon? In this brilliant new novel, Patricia O''Reilly explores that event and imagines what happened between the two.

Heaven is where the police are British, the chefs Italian, the mechanics German, the lovers French, and it''s all organized by the Swiss. Hell is where the police are German, the chefs are British, the mechanics French, and it''s all organized by the Italians. RTÉ''s Tony Connelly has produced an intriguing, thought-provoking, hilarious and sometimes poignant grand tour through European stereotypes. From the bailouts to the Euro-crisis, from the rise of Frau Merkel to the dalliances of the French presidents, Connelly does a brilliant job skewering the lies and truths of European stereotypes. A lot has happened in the nearly five years since Tony Connelly published the first edition of Don''t Mention the Wars to great acclaim. In this revised and updated edition, Connelly revisits every chapter and explores the news and the rich parade of events that have happened in that time.

A dippy photographer shoots talking donkeys and invisible strangers. A professor who in his youth vowed to kill Ian Paisley has so far failed to do so. A brash young journalist wants the local paper to save the world, but the editor prefers football. Only a thin veil separates the world we think we know from the other universe we suspect. Does a son always know his father and vice versa? When a large old duffer gets stuck in Newgrange, can love provide a way out? Why can''t the future be obvious as the past? Michael J. Farrell insists his stories are what people brood over in the small hours until some see the light. What they see is the fragile earth redeemed time and again by surprises. Ballinasloe may seem an odd beginning of the end of George W. Bush. A saintly old archbishop and a worldly new bishop climb Croagh Patrick together, ecclesiastical chalk and cheese each in search of a different end of the rainbow. New arrivals find one astronaut too many at the International Space Station. Life here below, Farrell contends, would be a dire place without insights and epiphanies and, of course, porter.

''Every trouble on this earth is caused by a man''s ability to stay quietly at home . . .''Willy Regan, son and carer of his blind mother, Moll, is the questionable narrator of this tale of petty doing, coming of age and falls from grace. Freed from the drudgery of his humdrum life, following Moll''s death, Willy embarks on a new life filled with hope. But three relationships drag him down, the first a criminal thug who used to bully him in school, the second a depressive man he saves from suicide and the third a polish poetess who uses her charms to convince him to partake in dodgy schemes. Willy is far from blameless, far from noble and his narration is not always trustworthy yet despite his actions and distractions he remains a character who values truth and attempts to do the right thing. Even if that leads down the path of disgrace.A novel that makes the city a character and draws the reader into the slightly slimy world of the desperate and the huckster, City of Dis is a page turner that combines elements of noir and Dickens to create memorable characters, scenes and images that will remain with you long after you read the last page.

The story of baby trafficking organised by nuns, sanctioned by an archbishop, administered by civil servants and approved by politicians who tried to keep it secret…In this re-issue of the 2012 second edition of his highly acclaimed Banished Babies, Mike Milotte uncovers in vivid detail how the State colluded with the Church to facilitate the export of thousands of ''illegitimate'' children in the 1950s and 60s, and how a black market existed in which Irish babies were bought and sold beyond the fringes of the official scheme.Mike Milotte''s damning exposé was first published to critical acclaim in 1997, and quickly achieved iconic status. In this second edition, the author has added previously untold personal stories from some of the ''banished babies'' he met in the intervening period, stories that further illuminate the murky shadows of this official, but long-concealed child-export business.Banished Babies will shock and anger anyone who is prepared to confront the truth about Ireland''s dark and sordid past.

In Life Lessons, Rita de Brún interviews some of Ireland''s most interesting characters. From judges, politicians and diplomats, to poets, commentators and campaigners, the contributors to this book come from a wide range of backgrounds and inhabit all walks of life. Despite their differences, there are uniting forces. All are fired by a drive to be true to who they are and follow their passions. All have their own life lessons to impart . . . As individuals we are all unique, but we are also very much the same. Our life circumstances and paths differ wildly, but behind the superficiality of class, status and wealth, most of us – at one time or another – ponder the same questions: what matters most, who are we at our very core and what has life taught us?In Life Lessons, which is composed of snippets of one-to-one conversations Rita de Brún had with twenty-one Irish women and men, the sameness and interconnectedness of us all becomes apparent, as does the inherent goodness, ordinariness, humbleness and spirituality that is central to the sheer extraordinariness of some of those that we admire the most.

In this powerful new biography, Aengus Finucane: In the Heart of Concern, the result of over 80 interviews and extensive travel, Deirdre Purcell explores the life and work of Concern founder Father Aengus Finucane. She charts the work he did to build Concern into the global charity and vital player in relief efforts around the world that it is today.A charismatic humanitarian visionary, he travelled the world to go to the aid of the poorest of the poor, whilst helping to turn the small charity into an international phenomenon. In many ways the most humane of priests, Aengus sought to address its root causes. The charitable work of Concern, under his leadership and influence, was not limited to responding with aid to emergencies as they arose; it also involved development, creating meaningful, long-lasting and positive change.The legacy of Aengus Fincuane is vast, and Concern, the charity he helped to build, continues his work today, deploying over 3,000 staff and reaching 12 million people in the world''s poorest countries. They respond to famines and floods and stay long after the television cameras have left, delivering sustainable improvements to the lives of the poorest. They ensure the work of Aengus Finucane will continue.

Founded in 1872, Temple Street Children''s Hospital is now one of Ireland''s best recognised children''s hospitals. From the nurses who used to smuggle ''Penny Horribles'' onto the wards, to the child whose journey to Dublin took seven hours on a turf-fired train, memories of Temple Street Children''s Hospital are as rich as they are varied. Today, the old buildings still resonate with stories but one tradition has not changed – a deep commitment to the well-being of Irish children. Drawing on sparkling interviews with past patients, retired staff members and others, this book takes a unique look past the hall door to uncover the life of a place that started as a private residence but has since become a world-class hospital. Illustrated throughout by beautiful photographs and images from the history, past and present of the hospital, Temple Street Children''s Hospital: An Illustrated History is a beautiful and engaging tribute to this brilliant institution and its wonderful staff.

Phone the cops or phone Alice. But just don''t expect life to ever be the same after you make that call...'' When two neighbouring Dublin couples decide to cooperate in building a townhouse that straddles both of their gardens, they have no idea that the journey they embark on will expose the faultlines within their relationships and result in a panicked decision one night when the two husbands, Chris and Ronan, are confronted by a moral dilemma. The consequences of their actions cast these law-abiding men adrift into unknown territory, propelled into a new moral landscape where it seems impossible to turn back. Written by a master story-teller, Tanglewood grows into an incisive dissection of Ireland in 2007, when – although these characters are unaware of it – the Celtic Tiger edifice is quietly imploding. It is bitter-sweet examination of the simmering tensions, intolerable strains and unbreakable bonds of memory and love that can simultaneously exist within marriage.