The most exciting first novel I have read in many years.
Anne Enright on Not Untrue and Not Unkind, by Ed O'Loughlin
An intellectual novel of ideas written with real verve and style.
Patricia Dunker on The Semantics of Murder by Aifric Campbell
So fresh, so original and disturbing and brave … an absolutely wonderful novel.
Colm Tóibin on John the Revelator by Peter Murphy
From loves to losses, ‘firsts’ linger longest in our memories. It is not surprising, therefore, that we hold a special reverence for the debut – literary or otherwise. But what is the impetus, and once the great publishing citadel is breached, how does it feel to let your offspring loose on an unsuspecting public? Three Irish writers, making their first forays into the world of fiction, offer their thoughts.
For his remarkably assured first novel Not Untrue and Not Unkind, former Irish Times foreign correspondent Ed O'Loughlin returns to familiar territory: the friendships and betrayals of a group of journalists and photographers covering Africa's wars.
Chosen by Joseph O'Connor as one of his highlights of 2008, Aifric Campbell’s The Semantics of Murder is a taut psychological drama about an eminent psychoanalyst whose sideline as a writer cuts too close to the bone.
Irish music journalist and art critic (Hot Press, Rolling Stone) Peter Murphy evokes the pent-up frustrations of parochial adolescence in his hypnotic literary debut John the Revelator, a tale of small town purgatory and the promise of escape.
Three literary firsts. Three compelling new voices. One unmissable event for budding novelists and fiction lovers alike.