Partisan • Patriotic • Internationalist
How to fight while healing? Hannah Proctor spells out this, and other core questions of Burnout clearly as she engages with literature, historical examples, and her personal experiences. From the Paris Commune to Jeremy Corbyn, Proctor brings out illustrative examples of emotional experiences in left politics and revolutionary activity. In […]
In her latest novel, Intermezzo, Sally Rooney continues her exploration of intimate relationships, albeit with a shift away from the clear political critique that characterised her earlier works. Its focus lies on what makes personal relationships successful, and, surprisingly, on unconditional love as something close to God. Rooney’s previous novel, […]
Tomás Mac Síomóin, From One Bright Island Flown: Irish Rebels, Exiles, and Martyrs in Latin America (Nuascéalta, 2022; €9.10 / £7.30). Available on line. The defeat of the Gaelic Irish, supported by Spanish forces, at the Battle of Kinsale in 1602 was the final blow in the English conquest of […]
Colum McCann, Apeirogon (London: Bloomsbury, 2020) In the context of the recent escalation of violence in the Middle East, and Ireland’s condemnation de facto of Israel’s annexation policy, this book by Colum McCann is worth reading more than ever. Unlike a pentagon, an apeirogon has an infinite number of sides, […]
Revd Fergus Butler-Gallie, Priests de la Resistance! (London: Oneworld Publications, 2019) With a jokey title like that, an equally jokey subtitle (The Loose Canons Who Fought Fascism in the Twentieth Century), and a super-scrupulous attention to his own title (“the Revd Fergus Butler-Gallie”), I should have sensed something fishy, but […]
Manchán Magan, Thirty-Two Words for Field (Dublin: Gill Books, 2020). This acclaimed book ostensibly celebrates the Irish-speaking community in Co. Kerry, where the author spent his holidays as a young man. He explores the rich vocabulary of traditional Irish-speakers and their words for natural phenomena: the weather, the sea, plants, […]