Preview: Irish reading
Here is my list of Irish people to read in 2026–2027. (And afterward.)
Who’m I overlooking?
I’m leaving Franks McCourt and O’Connor off the list. For now.
I also want to read a history book, The Rise and Fall of Christian Ireland. (Woodham-Smith’s Great Famine also is a work of history.)
My mother-in-law has scheduled various Irish books to read. Amazingly, nothing on her list is on mine.
The idea for this project came from viewing Atom Egoyan’s excellent, unsettling Felicia’s Journey (1999) and reflecting that the novel’s author, William Trevor, has been pretty well off my radar all my life.
Who’m I overlooking?
- John Banville, a.k.a. Benjamin Black
- Samuel Beckett
- Elizabeth Bowen
- Anna Burns
- Joyce Cary
- Erskine Childers (Mayfair-born)
- Roddy Doyle
- Maria Edgeworth
- J. G. Farrell
- Tara French
- Seamus Heaney
- James Joyce
- Claire Keegan
- C. S. Lewis
- Brian Moore
- Iris Murdoch
- Edna O’Brien
- Flann O’Brien
- Sally Rooney
- George Bernard Shaw
- Jonathan Swift
- J. M. Synge
- William Trevor
- Oscar Wilde
- Cecil Woodham-Smith (Welsh-born, Irish-sired)
- William Butler Yeats
I’m leaving Franks McCourt and O’Connor off the list. For now.
I also want to read a history book, The Rise and Fall of Christian Ireland. (Woodham-Smith’s Great Famine also is a work of history.)
My mother-in-law has scheduled various Irish books to read. Amazingly, nothing on her list is on mine.
The idea for this project came from viewing Atom Egoyan’s excellent, unsettling Felicia’s Journey (1999) and reflecting that the novel’s author, William Trevor, has been pretty well off my radar all my life.