Written over the course of ten years, while the author has been living in America’s northeast and southeast, Mary O’Donoghue’s stories in The Hour After Happy Hour reach into the wounds of immigration, transit, and exile.
Along with one or two books by James Joyce, Flann O'Brien's At Swim-Two-Birds is the most famous (and infamous) of Irish novels published in the twentieth century.
Pray for the Wanderer, usually regarded by critics as Kate O'Brien's response to the banning of Mary Lavelle in Ireland, is much more than a discourse on culture and censorship. It explores the emotional pain of an Irish writer genuinely torn between the artistic freedom of abroad and the beguiling beauty and security of home.