Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Ireland is suffering a crisis of authority. Catholic Church scandals, political corruption, and economic collapse have shaken the Irish people's faith in their institutions. The nation's struggle for independence is thrown into doubt. But, as Declan Kiberd argues in this engaging survey of post-war Irish literature, the country's creative writers have been alert to this reality from the start.

He describes the young Samuel Beckett witnessing the burning of Dublin in 1916 and realising that 'the birth of a nation might also seal its doom.' Surveying thirty works by modern Irish writers, Kiberd traces the response to the crisis of Irish Statehood in the work of Seamus Heaney, Edna O'Brien, Joseph O'Connor, Tom Murphy, Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, Derek Mahon and John Banville, among others. Placing these writers at the centre of Ireland's on-going exploration of the true meaning of freedom , Kiberd shows how Irish artists preserve and extend a humane culture that imagines a renewed, more plural and open nation.

Kiberd's Inventing Ireland , originally published in 1995 is a dazzlingly ambitious critical history of modern Irish literature and the standard work on the Irish Literary Revival. In After Ireland , Kiberd responds to the next generation of Irish writers, in this second renaissance of Irish literature.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

With this volume, Kiberd (Donald and Marilyn Keough Professor of Irish Studies, Univ. of Notre Dame) completes the trilogy he began with Inventing Ireland and Irish Classics. Here, the author examines works from the mid-20th century to the present beginning with Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot." Kiberd's premise is that rather than advancing an Irish renaissance in the arts, the birth of a new state in 1922 signaled the slow ending of this project. The new state, he maintains, failed to deliver real freedom as British domination was replaced by a theocratic bureaucracy under Éamon de Valera. From 1929 to 1968, censorship laws caused many writers and artists to leave Ireland. The Catholic Church dominated Irish life until its collapse late in the century as a result of secularization and clergy sex abuse scandals. Kiberd looks at 30 works by authors including Edna O'Brien, Frank O'Connor, Seamus Heaney, Eavan Boland, and Roddy Doyle. "Interchapters" provide background on concepts influencing their work, such as emigration, "the troubles" in Northern Ireland, Europeanization, and the women's movement. VERDICT Highly recommended for scholars and general readers interested in 20th-century trends in Irish literature as affected by -political, economic, and cultural influences.-Denise J. Stankovics, Vernon, CT © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

This final volume in a trilogy on Irish literary history from Kiberd (Ulysses and Us), a professor of Irish studies at the University of Notre Dame, plods along in regrettably forgettable fashion. The book picks up the thread begun by the trilogy's previous entries, Inventing Ireland and Irish Classics, in the mid-20th century, with Beckett's Waiting for Godot, and moves up to the present day. Along the way, Kiberd interrogates-sometimes usefully-the Republic of Ireland's failures as a state and points to the persistence of Irish writers in continuing to raise hot-button political issues, such as those concerning language, immigration, the role of women in society, and globalization. In the book's clearest and most coherent chapter, Kiberd illustrates the ways that the novelist John Banville shuns nationalism by publicly identifying his work more with the continental-European than the Irish literary tradition. Kiberd less convincingly argues that Roddy Doyle's Paddy Clark Ha Ha Ha illustrates the moral bankruptcy of national history, family, and religion through its 10-year-old protagonist's perspective. Kiberd's detailed plot synopses overwhelm his interpretations with extraneous detail, while the interpretations themselves often fail to convince, making this ambitious survey a missed feint at a worthy target. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

CHOICE Review

Renowned author of Inventing Ireland (1996), Kiberd (Irish studies, Univ. of Notre Dame) examines 27 post-independence works of Irish literature (poetry, drama, short stories, and novels) that evoke the aftershock of the devolution of a dream of Ireland that was fought for but never realized. Including the most famous Irish novelists (O'Brien, Banville, Deane, McGahern, Doyle), dramatists (Beckett, Friel), and poets (Heaney, Ni Dhomhnaill, Boland) along with less-known writers (Kate Thompson, Conor McPherson, Claire Keegan), Kiberd reveals literature as a palimpsest documenting historical fact read and revised through emotional landscapes revealing the heartbreaking consequences that political missteps wreak on the average life. In so doing, he reveals human beings struggling with the death of idealism replaced by the rigidity and boredom of Jansenist austerity closely followed by a repudiation of authentic culture in exchange for a tawdry version. The loss of myth and ritual, Kiberd clearly suggests, leaves a devastating void that only human connection can fill. Impressive in scope and erudition, Kiberd's book is required reading for anyone interested in Irish studies, modernism, or post-colonialism. Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers. --Valerie Ann Murrenus Pilmaier, University of Wisconsin-Sheboygan

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Declan Kiberd is the author of Inventing Ireland , Ulysses and Us and Irish Classics . He has won many literary prizes. He is currently Professor of English at the University of Notre Dame in the USA.