“In addition to developing intellectually bold arguments, Reading the Contemporary Irish Novel is also enjoyable to read – an enviable achievement for any academic book. There is an ease to Harte’s style and a lightness of touch in the way he deals with an expansive range of socio-historical contexts that makes this book deserving of a broad readership beyond the walls of the university.” (Irish Studies Review, 18 March 2015)
“It offers an excellent primer in each chapter that I can easily imagine being of great use not only to students of literature, but also to those of us engaged in the work of teaching and studying such works.” (New Madrid, 1 October 2015)
“Nothing is more difficult for a critic than to excavate the meanings of the present cultural moment, but that is precisely what Liam Harte has done in his sensitive analysis of recent Irish novels. The result is a generous, open-hearted book in which analytic brilliance is combined with imaginative audacity.”
―Declan Kiberd, University of Notre Dame
“In his brilliantly incisive and illuminating study, Liam Harte offers a superb critical appraisal of the most stirring and provocative works of Irish fiction in recent times. Subtly alert to the pervasive themes of history, memory and belonging, and always sensitive to the language, rhythm and form of individual works, Reading the Contemporary Irish Novel is an indispensable guide to the map of modern Irish fiction.” ―Stephen Regan, University of Durham
From the Inside Flap
This critical study is an authoritative guide to some of the most inventive and challenging fiction to emerge from Ireland in the last quarter century. Meticulously researched and lucidly written, it presents detailed interpretations of novels by some of the country’s most critically celebrated and internationally successful writers, including Sebastian Barry, Roddy Doyle, Anne Enright, Patrick McCabe, John McGahern, Edna O’Brien and Colm Tóibín. Harte’s discussion of these novels addresses centrally important themes in contemporary Irish society, including the inescapability of the past, the troubling legacies of cultural and psychic traumas, the tensions created by the shedding of predetermined gender roles, the re-evaluation of traditional family values and the re-imagining of rural and urban space during a period of far-reaching social, cultural and political change.
Each novel is set in its social and compositional contexts and Harte focuses on the historical and cultural realities of which these works are both a product and a critique. Central to the book’s overall argument is the belief that fictional responses to contemporary Irish society have taken on a heightened sociological complexion in the work of the country’s leading novelists, each of whom seeks a language, a rhythm and a form to match the angular nature of a society in a state of constant self-examination.
From the Back Cover
This critical study is an authoritative guide to some of the most inventive and challenging fiction to emerge from Ireland in the last quarter century. Meticulously researched and lucidly written, it presents detailed interpretations of novels by some of the country’s most critically celebrated and internationally successful writers, including Sebastian Barry, Roddy Doyle, Anne Enright, Patrick McCabe, John McGahern, Edna O’Brien and Colm Tóibín. Harte’s discussion of these novels addresses centrally important themes in contemporary Irish society, including the inescapability of the past, the troubling legacies of cultural and psychic traumas, the tensions created by the shedding of predetermined gender roles, the re-evaluation of traditional family values and the re-imagining of rural and urban space during a period of far-reaching social, cultural and political change.
Each novel is set in its social and compositional contexts and Harte focuses on the historical and cultural realities of which these works are both a product and a critique. Central to the book’s overall argument is the belief that fictional responses to contemporary Irish society have taken on a heightened sociological complexion in the work of the country’s leading novelists, each of whom seeks a language, a rhythm and a form to match the angular nature of a society in a state of constant self-examination.
About the Author
Liam Harte is Senior Lecturer in Irish and Modern Literature at the University of Manchester. He is the author or editor of seven books, including Contemporary Irish Fiction: Themes, Tropes, Theories (2000; co-edited with Michael Parker), Ireland Beyond Boundaries: Mapping Irish Studies in the Twenty-First Century (2007; co-edited with Yvonne Whelan) and Modern Irish Autobiography: Self, Nation and Society (2007). His The Literature of the Irish in Britain: Autobiography and Memoir, 1725–2001 (2009) was a Book of the Year in both the Times Literary Supplement and the Irish Independent, and appeared as a Palgrave Macmillan paperback in 2011.
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