Our first title of 2017 is Michel Déon’s moving tribute to his life in Ireland, ‘Horseman, Pass By!’ Déon was a novelist and distinguished member of Academie Francaise,  best known as the author of The Purple Taxi, which became a film in 1977 starring Fred Astaire. Déon passed away in December, after, so the story goes, awakening for just long enough to hold the first copy of the book in his hands. These reflective essays about Déon’s life and experiences in the west of Ireland describe the colourful and varied personalities that he came across since moving to Galway in the mid-1970s with his wife and two children. From his friendship with John McGahern and…

Over Christmas, Sam Coll’s stunning debut The Abode of Fancy received two amazing reviews, one from Andrew Gallix in the Guardian, and the second from Matthew Parkinson-Bennett in the Dublin Review of Books. Gallix lauded Coll for displaying ‘an emotional intelligence beyond his years: the unflinching, compassionate depiction of loneliness and ageing provides a melancholy undertow to the lusty comedy.’ Meanwhile, Parkinson-Bennett touted Coll as ‘one of the most interesting artists of his generation.’ Here at Lilliput we are overjoyed that Sam Coll is getting the recognition he deserves for his, as Andrew Gallix puts it, ‘ freewheeling doorstopper about hard-drinking oddballs and fantastical creatures.’ Pick up your copy here or pop in store to…