Best of
Irish-Literature

1986

The Bodhran Makers


John Brendan Keane - 1986
    The Bodhran (pronounced bough-rawn), makers of the title are "poverty stricken people who never lost their dignity." Every January, they celebrate their Celtic ancestry with a festival of singing, drinking, and music making with the Bodhran, a drum made from goat skin.

The Country Girls Trilogy and Epilogue


Edna O'Brien - 1986
    Together they set out to conquer Dublin and the world. Under the big city’s bright lights, they spin their lives into a whirl of comic and touching misadventures, wild flirtations, and reckless passions. But love changes everything. And as their lives take unexpected and separate turns, Baba and Kate must ultimately learn to go it alone.A beautiful portrait of the pain and joy of youth, the ruin of marriage gone wrong, and the ache of lost friendship and love, this trilogy of Edna O’Brien’s remarkable early novels is more than just a harbinger of the stunning and masterly writer she has become.

Selected Poems: Rogha Dánta


Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill - 1986
    A superb dual language volume, from a poet who has been a key figure in the on-going dialogue between the poetries of Ireland's two languages. Her eloquent poetry draws on folklore, mythology, and her own personal visions and beliefs, to celebrate with genuine passion and enthusiasm the common moments and workings of the world that comprise our everyday lives.

The New Oxford Book of Irish Verse


Thomas Kinsella - 1986
    As the most wide-ranging anthology available--spanning from the pre-Christian era to the present day, the poems are grouped in three sections. Kinsella's first selections are from the earliest pre-Christian times and move forward to the first poetry in English from the 14th century. Next comesIrish bardic poetry and English poetry in the era of Swift and Goldsmith. The final section brings us to the recent past and the present with 19th- and 20th-century poets from Davis, Mangan, Yeats, and Ferguson to Austin Clarke, Patrick Kavanagh, and Seamus Heaney.