Mark Harkin stumbles across Sam Semple, supporting the Webb Sisters, and becomes intrigued by Semple’s soulful and heartfelt songs. A Clearing in the Woods: Sam Semple’s ‘Mystery Songs’ (Proper Records, 2014) The Gig Rueful, self-mocking and bearing up manfully to the unbearable lightness of being: that’s Sam Semple. Whelan’s of Wexford Street, Dublin 2, famed […]
Tahar Ben Jelloun, the prize winning Moroccan novelist and essayist, author of books including The Sand Child,The Sacred night, and This Blinding Absence of Light, has been talking, at the Turin book fair about his latest novel L’Ablation. The novel which is already a best-seller in France, and has just been published in Italy, tells […]
“The struggle of man against power,” Milan Kundera wrote, “is the struggle of memory against forgetting.’’ As I walked out of the museum of Free Derry I tried to remember Kundera’s words, but instead I got them messed up in my head. I couldn’t remember them. I’d just interviewed John Kelly, one of the guardians […]
James Joyce‘s hugely influential short story collection Dubliners was published in 1914, and there are lots of publications / events and even apps to celebrate the centenary. One very exciting project is Dubliners 100. The new Irish literary publishers Tramp Press (founded by Sarah Davis-Goff* and Lisa Coen) invited a number of respected Irish writers […]
Teenage students, brandishing neo-fascist banners, protested this week outside Rome’s Giulio Cesare high-school. The object of their protest? The latest novel, ‘Sei come Sei‘ (roughly translated as ‘you are what you are’) by one of Italy’s most respected contemporary novelists, Melania G. Mazzucco – winner of the 2003 Premio Strega; more specifically the students were protesting […]
Donal Ryan, recently shortlisted for the prestigious International Impac Dublin literary award for his debut novel The Spinning Heart, has cemented his reputation as a heavyweight literary contender and ‘one to watch’ on the world literary stage. Published at the end of 2013, Ryan’s The Spinning Heart has already received acclaim winning both the Guardian […]
This month will see the twelfth IRC (Immigration Return Centre) in Britain open on Portland, Dorset. The two most recent additions to this flourishing archipelago have both been converted prisons in relatively remote areas, well away from the largest migrant communities with their specialist lawyers. The expectation may have been that re-opening the Verne as […]
“You write down in your newspaper articles that Russia and Ukraine will never be separated,” said Kolya, sticking his index-finger for emphasis like a boxer sticks the jab, “You tell them that!” Then he continued “I hope that you’re not here to debase the moral order of our society” – rumours about “provocateurs,” both foreign […]
Bruce Springsteen tipped his hat to local girl Lorde, when he played an unaccompanied acoustic folk version of her worldwide hit Royals during his show at Auckland’s Mt Smart Stadium (1st of March 2013).
