I live in London but am about to relocate to Ireland because of Brexit. Which books could help me to understand the soul of the Irish people?
Linda Joy, 50, communications specialist
JP O’Malley, cultural critic, journalist and writer, writes:
Begin in a random Dublin pub. Order a pint of Guinness, alone. Listen to the voices around you, but don’t stray far from your reading list. You’ll need a crash course in Irish history to start.
Roy Foster’s Modern Ireland 1600-1972 and Vivid Faces should give you everything you need. The former covers key historical events, such as the Ulster plantations of 1609-13, Catholic emancipation of 1829, and the great potato famine of 1845-49; while the latter dissects how revolutionary romanticism was replaced by a staunchly conservative form of pious Catholicism, when the Irish Free State emerged in 1922.
I see Irish history, Irish identity and Irish modernism as inseparable. Take emigration.It’s a recurring theme running through Irish history. But it’s been extremely helpful for exporting some of our greatest wordsmiths too. Without leaving Ireland, James Joyce would never have obsessively mythologised local and parochial Irish identity into the universal, in books such as Dubliners and Ulysses.
For Samuel Beckett , the exile life meant writing in French and disowning any notion of national identity. His novel trilogy, Malone Dies, Molloy and The Unnamable, is a must.
Lastly, consult The Penguin Book of Irish Poetry and bring it to an area of natural beauty. I’d suggest walking up Howth Head, looking out to the Irish Sea, and randomly reading aloud – in solitude – the lyrical magic verses of WB Yeats and Seamus Heaney until you weep with joy.
Finish like you started: alone, in a pub, as a spectator to both art and life.
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