Shamrock Tea

Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2001, this is the brilliant new novel from the author of Fishing For Amber. A heady brew, both as a book and as a drink. Carson writes like a poet, who can weave and bind his words together with such rhythm that his prose seems to slide off the page (Spectator).

A Concise Companion to Contemporary British Fiction offers an authoritative overview of contemporary British fiction in its social, political, and economic contexts. Focuses on the fiction that has emerged since the late 1970s, roughly since the start of the Thatcher era. Comprises original essays from major scholars. Topics range from the rise and fall of the postcolonial novel to controversies over the celebrity author. The emphasis is on the whole fiction scene, from bookstores and prizes to the changing economics of film adaptation. Enables students to read contemporary works of British fiction with a much clearer sense of where they fit within British cultural life.

An Open Access edition of this book is available on the Liverpool University Press website and the OAPEN library. Ciaran Carson is one of the most challenging and inventive of contemporary Irish writers, exhibiting verbal brilliance, formal complexity, and intellectual daring across a remarkably varied body of work. This study considers the full range of his oeuvre, in poetry, prose, and translations, and discusses the major themes to which he returns, including: memory and history, narrative, language and translation, mapping, violence, and power. It argues that the singularity of Carson’s writing is to be found in his radical imaginative engagements with ideas of space and place. The city of Belfast, in particular, occupies a crucially important place in his texts, serving as an imaginative focal point around which his many other concerns are constellated. The city, in all its volatile mutability, is an abiding frame of reference and a reservoir of creative impetus for Carson’s imagination. Accordingly, the book adopts an interdisciplinary approach that draws upon geography, urbanism, and cultural theory as well as literary criticism. It provides both a stimulating and thorough introduction to Carson’s work, and a flexible critical framework for exploring literary representations of space.

The first ever version of Dante by an Irish poet, Carson's Inferno is accented with a vivid Hiberno-English idiom that will surprise and renew the reader's faith in the art of translation. This is a retelling of Dante's epic journey for the twenty-first-century reader.

You will enjoy the folklore, poetry, stories, and creative recipes in this cookbook written by cook, author, and poet Karen Jean Matsko Hood. It is packed full of unique recipes that are fun and healthy to help you celebrate this holiday. Your family and friends will delight in helping to prepare these delicious recipes and then share them with others to enjoy the tradition of “all things green.” With a little luck of the Irish, you will all have hours of merriment and laughter surrounding you to remember for the rest of the year. This is a perfect cookbook to add to your library or to give as a gift.

While discussions in the field of Irish Studies traditionally gravitate towards themes of struggle, oppression and death, the present book originates from a contradictory impulse. Without losing sight of Ireland’s troubled history and the complexities that shape its present, it centres on instances of playfulness, light(ness) and air in Irish literature and culture. Refracted through the prism of contemporary philosophy (notably of Italo Calvino, Luce Irigaray and María Lugones), these categories serve as the basis for thirteen essays by academics from Poland, the UK, Germany and Spain. Some of these offer fresh readings of such seminal authors as W. B. Yeats, Louis MacNeice, Seamus Heaney and John Banville; others look at lesser-known figures, such as Eimar O’Duffy and Forrest Reid, who, before now, have received little scholarly attention.

The third revised and enlarged edition contains discussions of British, Irish and American literary works up to 2020. Focussing on outstanding writings in prose, poetry, drama and non-fiction, the book covers the time from the Anglo-Saxon period to the 21st century. The feature that makes this literary history unique among its rivals is the coverage of television/web series as a particular form of postmodern drama. The chapters on recent drama now contain detailed analyses of the development of TV and web series from Britain, Ireland and America, with extensive discussions of those series now considered classics. In addition, there are several major innovative features. To begin with, each century is introduced by a survey of the socio-political and cultural backgrounds in which the literary works are embedded. Furthermore, extensive visual material (more than 160 engravings, cartoons and paintings) has been integrated. This visual aspect as well as the introductory sections on art for each century give the reader an excellent idea of the symbiosis between visual and literary representations. Further innovative aspects include - discussions of non-fictional works from literary criticism and theory, travel writing, historiography, and the social sciences - analyses of such popular genres as crime fiction, science fiction, fantasy, the Western, horror fiction, and children’s literature - footnotes explaining technical and historical terms and events - a detailed glossary of literary terms - chronological tables for British/Anglo-Irish and American literatures an updated (cut-off date 2020), extensive bibliography containing suggestions for further reading