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Exiles (Paperback)
Donall MacAmhlaigh; Translated by Micheal O'hAodha
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R378
R309
Discovery Miles 3 090
Save R69 (18%)
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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Two Irish migrants on the cusp of new lives in post-war Britain.
Two young people who dare to dream of a better life, and dance the
music of survival in their adopted homeland. Afraid that his wife
and children will arrive over any day, Trevor is in a hurry to
settle old scores with his rivals and to prove himself the top
fighting man within his London-Irish community of drinkers and
navvies while Nano seeks to escape the stifling conformity and
petty jealousies of her peers and forget her failed love-match at
home. Will Trevor finally prove himself "the man" and secure the
respect that he feels is his by virtue of blood and tribe? Does
Nano have it in her to break free of the suffocating bonds of home
and community and find love with Lithuanian beau Julius? Written at
a time when the Irish were "building England up and tearing it down
again," and teeming with the raucous energy of post-war Kilburn,
Cricklewood and Camden Town this novel is one of the very few
authentic portrayals of working-class life in modern Irish
literature. Up to one in four UK citizens claims Irish heritage.
For each decade of the 1950s alone - a time of British postwar boom
and Irish economic decline - over half of Ireland's population,
those coming of age in that decade, emigrated: the majority to
England. And while Irish-owned companies today account for one
tenth of the almost GBP100bn British construction industry, those
navvies who built our homes, roads and hotels comprise a forgotten
generation, alongside the nurses that made the crossing alone to
power our nascent Welfare State. Donall Mac Amhlaigh was among
them, working on construction sites throughout London and the
Midlands, including the M1 and M6 motorways. In this
autobiographical novel are the people who later calcified into
stereotypes of Irish immigrants and their haunts: the navvy, the
drinker, the fighter, the nurse. As with the Polish builder,
Romanian gangster or Spanish nurse of today, such caricatures have
their source in real lives adapting to economic reality. 'A
wonderful addition to Irish literature.' - Colum McCann, National
Book Award winner 'I cannot stress strongly enough the importance
of bringing this work to a wider readership.' -Tony Murray -
Director, Irish Studies Centre, London Metropolitan University,
London. 'Donall Mac Amhlaigh is the most perceptive and informed
writer on the Irish in 20th century Britain.' - Professor Enda
Delaney, author of The Irish in Post-War Britain
This vivid memoir chronicles life in a small Gaeltacht area in
Munster that has remained largely immune to outside influences
because of its isolated location. O Maolchathaigh is an astute
observer of people and place. His recollections of a ""lost world""
are unique and searing in their honesty.
First published in Irish by An Gum in 1965, Seosamh Mac Grianna's
magnificent autobiographical novel Mo Bhealach Fein is translated
here for the first time into English by Micheal O hAodha. With
notes of Dead as Doornails and The Ginger Man in its absurd comedy,
Mac Grianna pens his reaction to an anglicised, urbanised,
post-revolution Ireland, demonstrating his talents at their peak.
This Road of Mine relates a humorous, picaresque journey through
Wales en route for Scotland, an Irish counterpart to Three Men in a
Boat with a twist of Down and Out in Paris and London. The
protagonist follows his impulses, getting into various absurd
situations: being caught on the Irish Sea in a stolen rowboat in a
storm; feeling guilt and terror in the misplaced certainty that he
had killed the likeable son of his landlady with a punch while
fleeing the rent; sleeping outdoors in the rain and rejecting all
aid on his journey. What lies behind his misanthropy is a reverence
for beauty and art and a disgust that the world doesn't share his
view, concerning itself instead with greed and pettiness. The prose
is full of personality, and O hAodha has proved himself adept at
capturing the life and spark of the writer's style. His
full-spirited translation has given the English-reading world
access to this charming and relentlessly entertaining bohemian
poet, full of irrepressible energy for bringing trouble on himself.
As well as the undoubted importance of this text culturally, Mac
Grianna is able to make rank misanthropy enjoyable - making music
out of misery. The voice is wonderful: hyperbolic but sincere.
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I Am Lewy (Hardcover)
Eoghan O'Tuairisc; Translated by Micheal O'hAodha
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R343
R280
Discovery Miles 2 800
Save R63 (18%)
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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Loodeen Winders - Lewy, six years of age - is growing up sharp.
It's the turbulent early 1920s in a market town in the west of
Ireland. Free State soldiers patrol in front of the Workhouse.
Lewy's worried about his father's car being commandeered again. The
nuns loom over Lewy and his classmates, amongst them the orphans -
those shadowy figures, 'slobbery and weak and raggy'. Encounters
with Violet and 'Brazenface' Rosaleen McInally in the woods play on
Lewy's mind, even while he's trying to fathom the death of his
beloved Grandfather. For a treat he goes behind the screen at the
Pictures where his father creates the sound effects with his
'Jazzdrums' for the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Lewy's mother works
magic on the sewing machine and picks up the pieces when things get
out of hand - like the time he breaks his arm walking the wire in
their backyard circus. On the fortieth anniversary of Eoghan O
Tuairisc's death, this is the first appearance in English of the
frank, funny voice of Lewy, a vital witness of his place and time.
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Woven (Paperback)
Angharad Tomos; Translated by Micheal O'hAodha
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R302
Discovery Miles 3 020
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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Stories set in Ireland, Slovenia, Slovakia, and India, penetrating
stories woven out of Gabriel Rosenstock's own fantastic worlds,
some newly translated from the Irish, others appearing in English
for the first time. 'The Partisan and other stories' has a stunning
range of moods, styles, voices and themes - from the quirky and
mirth-provoking to the magically lyrical - all inviting the reader
to engage in an entrancing and passionate conversation about the
nature of reality.
Irish migrants in new communities: Seeking the Fair Land? comprises
the second collection of essays by these editors exploring fresh
aspects and perspectives on the subject of the Irish diaspora. This
volume, edited by Mairtin O Cathain and Micheal O hAodha, develops
many of the oral history themes of the first book and concentrates
more on issues surrounding the adaptation of migrants to new or
host environments and cultures. These new places often have a
jarring effect, as well as a welcoming air, and the Irish bring
their own interpretations, hostilities, and suspicions, all of
which are explored in a fascinating and original number of new
perspectives.
The relationship between Ireland and the diversity of its diasporas
has always been complex and multi-layered, but it is not until
recently that this reality has really been acknowledged in the
public sphere and indeed, amongst the scholarly community
generally. This reality is partly a consequence of both
"push-and-pull" factors and the relatively late arrival of
globalization trends to the island of Ireland itself, situated as
it is on the Atlantic seaboard between Europe and the US. Ireland
is changing however, some would say at an unprecedented speed as
compared with many of its neighbours, and the sense of Irish
identity and connection to the home country is changing too. What
is the relationship of Ireland and the Irish with its diaspora
communities and how is this articulated? The voices who speak in
New Perspectives on the Irish Abroad: The Silent People?, edited by
Micheal O hAodha and Mairtin O Cathain, "talk back" to Ireland and
Ireland talks to them, and it is in telling that we see a new
story, an emerging discourse-the narratives of the "hidden" Irish,
the migrant Irish, the diaspora whose voices and refrains were
hitherto neglected or subject to silence.
As with its European neighbours, Ireland is home to a number of
festivals which celebrate the art of travel writing, the annual
Lismore Festival of Travel Writing in County Waterford for example.
The modern genre of travel writing as practiced by Irish writers is
very different to much of what passed for travel writing in
Ireland, until very recently. In the colonial context that defined
Irish history and culture prior to the last century, travel writing
was frequently viewed an adjunct to the all-knowing imperial gaze.
It was an element in that tradition which sought to know, to define
and to categorise peoples and their places. It was part of the
ordering process that was the colonial project. It was a
celebration of knowing which we now realise was frequently a
charade. In many cases, as with the travel accounts produced by
members of the colonial class in Eastern Europe or Asia, these
descriptions of other peoples and cultures were produced in
accordance with an inherited and (sometimes-exoticised) tradition
or episteme as littered with cliche and stereotype. In many cases
the writers or hobbyists in question knew next to nothing about the
people they were describing; they frequently had only the vaguest
knowledge concerning the cultures or languages that they were
classifying . This book usurps this tradition. While the vast
majority of Irish travelogues as written in the past two centuries
were written in English, this travelogue was written (and published
originally) in Irish before later being translated and re-shaped in
English .
The Willow's Whisper brings the voices of 35 poets from the Irish
and Native American communities together in one compilation. This
collection of poems provides an aesthetic commentary on the
potential which is beyond and within the everyday. From Gabriel
Rosenstock and Biddy Jenkinson to N. Scott Momaday and Karenne
Wood, mother-earth comes to life through each sound and syllable,
and reawakens our senses to the world at its most beautiful and
evocative. This volume will aid us to reconnect with that part of
our being which we may have lost touch with; that part of us
intimately linked to nature. It will help us see life in every
meandering stream as it surges and animates, and in the breeze
moving through the branches of a willow-a whisper of hope.
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