Search results for ""Author Colm Toibin""

Winner of the 1921 Pulitzer Prize, The Age of Innocence is an elegant, masterful portrait of desire and betrayal in old New York—now with a new introduction from acclaimed author Colm Tóibín for the novel’s centennial. With vivid power, Wharton evokes a time of gaslit streets, formal dances held in the ballrooms of stately brownstones, and society people "who dreaded scandal more than disease." This is Newland Archer's world as he prepares to many the docile May Welland. Then, suddenly, the mysterious, intensely nonconformist Countess Ellen Olenska returns to New York after a long absence, turning Archer's world upside down. This classic Wharton tale of thwarted love is an exuberantly comic and profoundly moving look at the passions of the human heart, as well as a literary achievement of the highest order.

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Widely accepted as Henry James' great masterpiece, The Portrait of a Lady is a poignant and intense exploration of freedom and identity. This edition is introduced by Costa Award-winning author Colm Tóibín.Part of the Macmillan Collector’s Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket-sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. Intelligent, beautiful and vivacious, Isabel Archer fascinates and intimidates the elite society of Albany, New York. Fiercely protective of her independence, she travels to England with her aunt to escape a persistent suitor but, upon inheriting a considerable fortune, falls into the sway of the devious Mrs Merle who whisks her off to Italy. There she is seduced by the narcissistic Gilbert Osmond, an art collector who will stop at nothing to possess her, and whose connection to Mrs Merle is shrouded in mystery.

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In this book, novelist Colm Toibin offers a deeply personal introduction to the work and life of one of his most important literary influences--the American poet Elizabeth Bishop. Ranging across her poetry, prose, letters, and biography, Toibin creates a vivid picture of Bishop while also revealing how her work has helped shape his sensibility as a novelist and how her experiences of loss and exile resonate with his own. What emerges is a compelling double portrait that will intrigue readers interested in both Bishop and Toibin. For Toibin, the secret of Bishop's emotional power is in what she leaves unsaid. Exploring Bishop's famous attention to detail, Toibin describes how Bishop is able to convey great emotion indirectly, through precise descriptions of particular settings, objects, and events. He examines how Bishop's attachment to the Nova Scotia of her childhood, despite her later life in Key West and Brazil, is related to her early loss of her parents--and how this connection finds echoes in Toibin's life as an Irish writer who has lived in Barcelona, New York, and elsewhere. Beautifully written and skillfully blending biography, literary appreciation, and descriptions of Toibin's travels to Bishop's Nova Scotia, Key West, and Brazil, On Elizabeth Bishop provides a fresh and memorable look at a beloved poet even as it gives us a window into the mind of one of today's most acclaimed novelists.

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Colm Toibin's Brooklyn is a devastating story of love, loss and one woman's terrible choice between duty and personal freedom. The book that inspired the major motion picture starring Saoirse Ronan.It is Ireland in the early 1950s and for Eilis Lacey, as for so many young Irish girls, opportunities are scarce. So when her sister arranges for her to emigrate to New York, Eilis knows she must go, leaving behind her family and her home for the first time.Arriving in a crowded lodging house in Brooklyn, Eilis can only be reminded of what she has sacrificed. She is far from home - and homesick. And just as she takes tentative steps towards friendship, and perhaps something more, Eilis receives news which sends her back to Ireland. There she will be confronted by a terrible dilemma - a devastating choice between duty and one great love.***'With this elating and humane novel, Colm Tóibín has produced a masterwork' Sunday Times 'Unforgettable' Spectator'The most compelling and moving portrait of a young woman I have read in a long time' Zoë Heller Guardian, Books of the Year 'Magnificent' Sunday Telegraph'A work of such skill, understatement and sly jewelled merriment could haunt your life' Ali Smith TLS, Books of the YearWhen you are finished why not read the companion novel Nora Webster.

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THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLERWINNER OF THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE 2022SHORTLISTED FOR THE WALTER SCOTT PRIZE FOR HISTORICAL FICTION 2022From one of our greatest living writers comes a sweeping novel of unrequited love and exile, war and family.The Magician tells the story of Thomas Mann, whose life was filled with great acclaim and contradiction. He would find himself on the wrong side of history in the First World War, cheerleading the German army, but have a clear vision of the future in the second, anticipating the horrors of Nazism.He would have six children and keep his homosexuality hidden; he was a man forever connected to his family and yet bore witness to the ravages of suicide. He would write some of the greatest works of European literature, and win the Nobel Prize, but would never return to the country that inspired his creativity.Through one life, Colm Tóibín tells the breathtaking story of the twentieth century.___________________________________'As with everything Colm Tóibín sets his masterful hand to, The Magician is a great imaginative achievement -- immensely readable, erudite, worldly and knowing, and fully realized' - Richard Ford'No living novelist dramatizes artistic creation as profoundly, as luminously, as Colm Tóibín . . . reading him is among the deepest pleasures our literature can offer' - Garth Greenwell'This is not just a whole life in a novel, it's a whole world' - Katharina Volckmer

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Penguin Readers is an ELT graded reader series for learners of English as a foreign language. With carefully adapted text, new illustrations and language learning exercises, the print edition also includes instructions to access supporting material online.Titles include popular classics, exciting contemporary fiction, and thought-provoking non-fiction, introducing language learners to bestselling authors and compelling content.The eight levels of Penguin Readers follow the Common European Framework of Reference for language learning (CEFR). Exercises at the back of each Reader help language learners to practise grammar, vocabulary, and key exam skills. Before, during and after-reading questions test readers' story comprehension and develop vocabulary.Brooklyn, a Level 5 Reader, is B1 in the CEFR framework. The text is made up of sentences with up to four clauses, introducing present perfect continuous, past perfect, reported speech and second conditional. It is well supported by illustrations, which appear regularly.When Eilis gets a job in Brooklyn, New York, she leaves her family in Ireland to travel to a new country. It is an exciting adventure, with lots of new people and things to learn, but Eilis misses Ireland. When she meets someone special, Eilis must choose between her past and her future.Visit the Penguin Readers websiteExclusively with the print edition, readers can unlock online resources including a digital book, audio edition, lesson plans and answer keys.

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In the captivating stories that make up The Empty Family Colm Tóibín delineates with a tender and unique sensibility lives of unspoken or unconscious longing, of individuals, often willingly, cast adrift from their history. 'I imagined lamplight, shadows, soft voices, clothes put away, the low sound of late news on the radio. And I thought as I crossed the bridge at Baggot Street to face the last stretch of my own journey home that no matter what I had done, I had not done that.'From the young Pakistani immigrant who seeks some kind of permanence in a strange town to the Irish woman reluctantly returning to Dublin and discovering a city that refuses to acknowledge her long absence each of Tóibín's stories manage to contain whole worlds: stories of fleeing the past and returning home, of family threads lost and ultimately regained.'Exquisite . . . The chief reason to read these stories is the peculiar power of Colm Tóibín's prose' Telegraph 'Astonishingly precise, depicting complex and conflicted states of mind with rare clarity' Observer 'Beautifully observed' Sunday Times

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Colm Tóibín was born in Ireland in 1955. He is the author of ten previous novels, including The Master, Brooklyn, and The Magician, and two collections of stories. He has been three times shortlisted for the Booker Prize. In 2021, he was awarded the David Cohen Prize for Literature. Tóibín was appointed the Laureate for Irish Fiction for 2022-2024. Long Island is his eleventh novel.

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In Love in a Dark Time, Colm Tóibín looks at the life and work of some of the greatest and most influential artists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His subjects range from figures such as Oscar Wilde, born in the 1850s, to Pedro Almodóvar, born nearly a hundred years later. Tóibín studies how a changing world impacted on the lives of people who, on the whole, kept their homosexuality hidden, and reveals that the laws of desire changed everything for them, both in their private lives and in the spirit of their work.

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THE TOP 10 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER'Unforgettable' Mary Beard'They cut her hair before they dragged her to the place of sacrifice. Her mouth was gagged to stop her cursing her father, her cowardly, two-tongued father. Nonetheless, they heard her muffled screams.'On the day of his daughter's wedding, Agamemnon orders her sacrifice. His daughter is led to her death, and Agamemnon leads his army into battle, where he is rewarded with glorious victory. Three years later, he returns home and his murderous action has set the entire family - mother, brother, sister - on a path of intimate violence, as they enter a world of hushed commands and soundless journeys through the palace's dungeons and bedchambers. As his wife seeks his death, his daughter, Electra, is the silent observer to the family's game of innocence while his son, Orestes, is sent into bewildering, frightening exile where survival is far from certain. Out of their desolating loss, Electra and Orestes must find a way to right these wrongs of the past even if it means committing themselves to a terrible, barbarous act.House of Names is a story of intense longing and shocking betrayal. It is a work of great beauty, and daring, from one of our finest living writers.'A masterpeice' Daily Telegraph'Devastatingly human ... hauntingly believable' Guardian 'A celebration of what novels can do' Observer

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* * * Shortlisted for the 2014 Costa Novel Awards and the 2015 Folio Prize * * * Nora Webster is the heartbreaking new novel from one of the greatest novelists writing today.It is the late 1960s in Ireland. Nora Webster is living in a small town, looking after her four children, trying to rebuild her life after the death of her husband. She is fiercely intelligent, at times difficult and impatient, at times kind, but she is trapped by her circumstances, and waiting for any chance which will lift her beyond them. Slowly, through the gift of music and the power of friendship, she finds a glimmer of hope and a way of starting again. As the dynamic of the family changes, she seems both fiercely self-possessed but also a figure of great moral ambiguity, making her one of the most memorable heroines in contemporary fiction. The portrait that is painted in the years that follow is harrowing, piercingly insightful, always tender and deeply true. Colm Tóibín's Nora is a character as resonant as Anna Karenina or Madame Bovary and Nora Webster is a novel that illuminates our own lives in a way that is rare in literature. Its humanity and compassion forge an unforgettable reading experience. 'A profoundly gifted world writer' Sebastian Barry

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Colm Toibin's Brooklyn is a devastating story of love, loss and one woman's terrible choice between duty and personal freedom. It is Ireland in the early 1950s and for Eilis Lacey, as for so many young Irish girls, opportunities are scarce. So when her sister arranges for her to emigrate to New York, Eilis knows she must go, leaving behind her family and her home for the first time.Arriving in a crowded lodging house in Brooklyn, Eilis can only be reminded of what she has sacrificed. She is far from home - and homesick. And just as she takes tentative steps towards friendship, and perhaps something more, Eilis receives news which sends her back to Ireland. There she will be confronted by a terrible dilemma - a devastating choice between duty and one great love.'With this elating and humane novel, Colm Tóibín has produced a masterwork' Sunday Times 'The most compelling and moving portrait of a young woman I have read in a long time' Zoë Heller Guardian, Books of the Year 'A work of such skill, understatement and sly jewelled merriment could haunt your life' Ali Smith TLS, Books of the Year

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It is Ireland in the early 1950s and for Eilis Lacey, as for so many young Irish girls, opportunities are scarce. So when her sister arranges for her to emigrate to New York, Eilis knows she must go, leaving behind her family and her home for the first time.Arriving in a crowded lodging house in Brooklyn, Eilis can only be reminded of what she has sacrificed. She is far from home - and homesick. And just as she takes tentative steps towards friendship, and perhaps something more, Eilis receives news which sends her back to Ireland. There she will be confronted by a terrible dilemma - a devastating choice between duty and one great love.

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An intimate study of three of Ireland's greatest writers from one of its best-loved contemporary voices, Colm Tóibín__________________In Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know Colm Tóibín takes three of Ireland's greatest writers - Oscar Wilde, W.B. Yeats and James Joyce - and examines their earliest influences: their fathers. With his inimitable wit and sensitivity, Tóibín introduces us to Wilde Senior, the philandering doctor whose libel case prefigured that of his son; the elder Yeats, an impoverished artist who never finished a painting; and to John Stanislaus Joyce, the hard-drinking, storytelling father of James, who couldn't feed his own family. This is an illuminating study of how each of these men cast a long shadow not only over the lives of their famous sons, but over the works for which they are celebrated and cherished.__________________'Astonishing to read. Tóibín has a hawk-like eye for literary subtleties, and a generosity towards his subjects that is warm' Sunday Times'Funny, exciting, illuminating, wonderful, so engaging. Tells us more than a little about our own selves along the way' Irish Times'There is something interesting and insightful on almost every page' Observer'Sparkling, subtle, witty and often deeply moving . . . A classic' Fintan O'Toole, New Statesman'Scintillating, imaginative, enlightening and powerfully moving throughout' Roy Foster, Spectator

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In the summer after the Anglo-Irish Agreement, when tension was high in Northern Ireland, Colm Tóibín walked along the border from Derry to Newry. Bad Blood is a stark and evocative account of this journey through fear and hatred, and a report on ordinary life and the legacy of history in a bleak and desolate landscape. Tóibín describes the rituals – the marches, the funerals, the demonstrations – observed by both communities along the border, and listens to the stories which haunt both sides. With sympathy and insight Bad Blood captures the intimacy of life along one of the most contested strips of land in Western Europe.

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Colm Tóibín's personal account of encountering James Baldwin's work, published in Baldwin's centenary year. Acclaimed Irish novelist Colm Tóibín first read James Baldwin just after turning eighteen. He had completed his first year at an Irish university and was struggling to free himself from a religious upbringing. He had even considered entering a seminary and was searching for literature that would offer illumination and insight. Inspired by the novelGo Tell It on the Mountain, Tóibín found a writer who would be a lifelong companion and exemplar. From On James BaldwinBaldwin was interested in the hidden and dramatic areas in his own being, and was prepared as a writer to explore difficult truths about his own private life. In his fiction, he had to battle for the right of his protagonists to choose or influence their destinies. He knew about guilt and rage and bitter privacies in a way that few of his White novelist contemporaries did. And this was not simply because he was Bla

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A Guest at the Feast uncovers the places where politics and poetics meet, where life and fiction overlap, where one can be inside writing and also outside of it.From the melancholy and amusement within the work of the writer John McGahern to an extraordinary essay on his own cancer diagnosis, Tóibín delineates the bleakness and strangeness of life and also its richness and its complexity. As he reveals the shades of light and dark in a Venice without tourists and the streets of Buenos Aires riddled with disappearances, we find ourselves considering law and religion in Ireland as well as the intricacies of Marilynne Robinson''s fiction.The imprint of the written word on the private self, as Tóibín himself remarks, is extraordinarily powerful. In this collection, that power is gloriously alive, illuminating history and literature, politics and power, family and the self.''Tóibín''s voice is so powerful and distinct, his descriptions so precise, th

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Winner of the David Cohen Prize for Literature 2021. From the highly acclaimed author of Brooklyn, Colm Tóibín's first collection of poetry explores sexuality, religion and belonging through a modern lens. Fans of Colm Tóibín's novels, including The Magician, The Master and Nora Webster, will relish the opportunity to re-encounter Tóibín in verse. Vinegar Hill explores the liminal space between private experiences and public events as Tóibín examines a wide range of subjects – politics, queer love, reflections on literary and artistic greats, living through COVID, memory and a fading past, and facing mortality. The poems reflect a life well-travelled and well-lived; from growing up in the town of Enniscorthy, wandering the streets of Dublin and Barcelona, and crossing the bridges of Venice to visiting the White House, readers will travel through familiar locations and new destinations through Tóibín's unique lens. Within this rich collection of poems written over the course of several decades, shot through with keen observation, emotion and humour, Tóibín offers us lines and verses to provoke, ponder and cherish.

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