Sunrise With Sea Monster

In the blinding morning sunlight, Donal Gore stands in a monastery courtyard. He had travelled to Spain to fight in the Civil War. Captured and awaiting execution, time now slows for him. And he is haunted by memories of his childhood. His was a life of piano lessons, of an unexpected love affair, and of betrayal. And soon he will realise that this story has yet to find its end . . . SUNRISE WITH SEA MONSTER is a wonderfully moving story of a father and son, and their attempts to understand each other. Written in spare, rich prose, it will be loved by all those who devour his new novel, SHADE.

The man leads a seemingly conventional life. Every morning he leaves his suburban house, and his wife and young daughter, walking past the hissing lawn-sprinklers to the station where people wait for trains that hardly ever come. But the world around him is changing. The summer's heat is so intense that the pavements begin to crack. Railway lines swell and buckle. And now the man realises that he is changing too . . . Full of extraordinary images, The Dream of a Beast is a vision of the beast that perhaps lies inside us all. Its power lingers long beyond its final pages.

Sea Narratives: Cultural Responses to the Sea, 1600-Present explores the relationship between the sea and culture from the early modern period to the present. The collection uses the concept of the ‘sea narrative’ as a lens through which to consider the multiple ways in which the sea has shaped, challenged, and expanded modes of cultural representation to produce varied, contested and provocative chronicles of the sea across a variety of cultural forms within diverse socio-cultural moments. Sea Narratives provides a unique perspective on the relationship between the sea and cultural production: it reveals the sea to be more than simply a source of creative inspiration, instead showing how the sea has had a demonstrable effect on new modes and forms of narration across the cultural sphere, and in turn, how these forms have been essential in shaping socio-cultural understandings of the sea. The result is an incisive exploration of the sea’s force as a cultural presence.

Set against the backdrop of the Atlantic slave trade, this book traces the development, exhibition and final disposition of one of J.M.W. Turner's greatest and most memorable paintings. Queen Victoria's reign (1837-1901) in Great Britain produced unprecedented wealth and luxury. For artists and writers this period was particularly noteworthy in that it gave them the opportunity to both praise their country and criticize its overreaching ambition. At the forefront of these artists and writers were men like J.M.W. Turner, Dickens, Thackeray, Tennyson, and John Ruskin, who created some of the most enduring works of art while exposing many of the social evils of their native land. The book also analyzes the man behind the painting. Aloof, gruff and mysterious, Turner resisted success. He worked as a solitary artist, traveling to Europe, sketching towns along the way, studying nature, and transferring his experiences to finished paintings upon his return to London. The son of a barber, he grew up in London and experienced many of the social issues of the age: slavery and freedom, poverty in the slums, monarchy and democracy, stability and anarchy. He was a poet of nature and its innumerable mysteries.

Drawing on literary and visual texts spanning from the twelfth century to the present, this volume of essays explores what happens when narratives try to push the boundaries of what can be said about death.

Reproduction of the original: Turner's Golden Visions by C. Lewis Hind

"The poems in Sarah Gridley's new book have the sharpest of intellects and the tenderest of spirits, sonically superb and wildly engaging."--Kazim Ali, author of The Far Mosque and The Fortieth Day

From Gaelic annals and medieval poetry to contemporary Irish literature, A History of Irish Literature and the Environment examines the connections between the Irish environment and Irish literary culture. Themes such as Ireland's island ecology, the ecological history of colonial-era plantation and deforestation, the Great Famine, cultural attitudes towards animals and towards the land, the postcolonial politics of food and energy generation, and the Covid-19 pandemic - this book shows how these factors determine not only a history of the Irish environment but also provide fresh perspectives from which to understand and analyze Irish literature. An international team of contributors provides a comprehensive analysis of Irish literature to show how the literary has always been deeply engaged with environmental questions in Ireland, a crucial new perspective in an age of climate crisis. A History of Irish Literature and the Environment reveals the socio-cultural, racial, and gendered aspects embedded in questions of the Irish environment.