The Lilliput Press is greatly saddened to hear of the death of Kevin Casey, author of The Sinners’ Bell and A State of Mind. Publisher Antony Farrell says of the author, ‘He was an élégant gentle man whose nuanced fiction spoke to the buried passions of Irish provincial life: a much missed figure following on from the death of his wife Eavan Boland.’ Our thoughts are with Kevin’s family at this difficult time.
Join Lilliput Press for the launch of The Geometer Lobachevsky, the highly-anticipated new novel from award-winning author Adrian Duncan. 6PM, Thursday, 31 March, 2022, at Hodges Figgis. Greg Baxter will be the guest speaker on the evening. We look forward to welcoming you all! Book your Free Ticket here. When I was sent by the Soviet state to London to further my studies in calculus, knowing I would never become a great mathematician, I strayed instead into the foothills of anthropology … Nikolai Lobachevsky, mathematician, surveyor and great-grandson of his illustrious namesake, arrives in Ireland to lend his expertise to the new Republic, helping Bord na Móna to survey a bog in the Midlands….
I spent five years in China. I am no longer expecting to return. While it seems like barriers to travel – these and a hundred signs say that the country is turning inwards, preparing for some other surprise – will keep casual travellers away for another two years, something more has been broken in me and people like me. One of the strangest inflections of the pandemic for me has been to realize that the virus, however it became a world-plague, likely came from a rainforest in which I briefly stayed. The Mojiang mine, whatever its place in the calamity, was just a few kilometres from where I was working. Flashing images of the biology…
Make sure you get your orders in by the following dates to ensure delivery before Christmas! Deliveries Within Ireland & NI: Order by 17th December 2021 Deliveries to UK: Order by 13th December 2021 Deliveries to Rest of Europe: Order by 13th December 2021 Deliveries to USA: Order by 8 December 2021 Deliveries to Rest of World: Order by 2 December 2021 All delivery times listed are in line with An Post. Place your order soon to make sure you don’t miss out on your holiday reads! And make sure to have a look at our Christmas Shop for 15% off selected titles.
I was bitten by the Yeats bug at the fourth annual Yeats Summer School in Sligo, Ireland, in 1963. The opening ceremony in neighbouring Drumcliff Church was magical. Even a fledgling student knew the ringing lines in which Yeats declared, Under bare Ben Bulben’s head In Drumcliff churchyard Yeats is laid. An ancestor was rector there… I could not have foreseen that fifty-six years later I would have the honour of delivering the opening address at the sixtieth Yeats Summer School to an audience at Drumcliff Church that included the great-great-great-granddaughters of the ancestor referred to in Yeats’s poem, Reverend John Yeats, who was Rector at Drumcliff from 1811 to 1846. The feeling that night…
Irish publishing takeover at Cheltenham Literature Festival 2021 For the first time, the Lilliput Press and New Island Books have made the historic move of bringing a showcase of Irish-published literary talent – the Shebeen Series – to The Times and The Sunday Times Cheltenham Literature Festival 2021 as a representation of the industry and the best of Irish writing. With the generous support of the Arts Council of Ireland, and in partnership with the Cheltenham Literature Festival, this exciting event sees two of Ireland’s most prestigious and long-standing publishers join together to take over a stage for a full afternoon at the world’s oldest literature festival. Irish publishing houses have never before been…
A compilation of literary events. Join The Lilliput Press this evening at 6:30pm for a night of literary celebration as part of Culture Night 2021. The Lilliput Press is proud to present a video compilation of the highlights of our online literary events throughout 2021. This compilation will feature critically acclaimed authors such as Adrian Duncan, Declan Murphy, Joseph Hassett, and Martin Shaw. Join us to listen to the featured in-conversation guests, including writer Cathy Sweeney, Birdwatch Ireland’s Niall Hatch, director Alan Gilsenan, actor Lisa Dwan, singer Tara Erraught, poets Paula Meehan and Teri Cross Davis, writer and documentary maker Manchán Magan, and publisher at Lilliput Press, Antony Farrell. Watch online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1K4ssz-a_pQ
I am American, but I lived in China for eight years, in Shanghai and Kunming. Kunming is the capital of Yunnan, a mountainous province that is home to the China side of the Old Silk Road and where the people often said: 天高皇帝远 Tiān gāo, huángdì yuan Heaven is high and the emperor is far away My time in Yunnan was memorable but brief. The lion’s share of those years in China was lived in Shanghai. Shanghai, 上海 (Above Sea; Upon the Sea): a city that is both sinking and flooding – expected to be underwater by 2050. I write this from California where fires of a season like no other in history are still burning and lockdown orders are the strictest since spring. 1. ~Space~ Cicadas Dew-rinsed: their pure notes carry far. Windblown: as dry, fasting leaves are blown. Chirr after chirr, as if in unison. But each perches on…
In 1961 J.P. Donleavy published a stage play called Fairytales of New York; this mutated into a 341-page novel released in September 1973 titled A Fairy Tale of New York. On 17 November 1987 Shane MacGowan and Kirsty MacColl, with Steve Lillywhite, produced a single that was to became the most celebrated Christmas song on the planet. In December 2020 a cancel culture, combatted by Nick Cave, bowdlerised its lyrics while Johnny Depp’s documentary film on MacGowan is also being screened. If you google A Fairy Tale of New York, you will find Donleavy’s comically anarchic original novel available as an ebook on the website hosted by The Lilliput Press. When MacGowan visited J.P. Donleavy…
A billion balconies facing the sun; still, it means a final goodbye to wars and ideologies… JG Ballard, Cocaine Nights, (1996) XI Hails a Historic Free Trade Move / APEC summit endorses route to promote economic integration in Asia-Pacific The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit yesterday opened a route toward a vast free trade area in the region, host Xi Jinping said, calling it a historic step… Besides accounting for more than fifty percent of the world’s gross domestic product, 21-member APEC also makes up nearly half of world trade and 40 percent of the Earth’s population. The APEC leaders also endorsed a proposal to work more closely to combat official corruption, Xi said. Shanghai Daily, cover story, Wednesday 12…