By
William Wall
Viewing Ireland, the world's second wealthiest nation in 2007, through the prism of Charles Dickens' Hard Times, novelist William Wall - in an article based on his recent speech at the Kate O'Brien Weekend - asks his fellow writers to leave their ivory towers.
Irish writers are more insiders than outsiders now. We have the Arts Council to give us bursaries, albeit much reduced since the Depression began; we have Aosdána to support us in our old age; we have Ireland Literature Exchange to help our work into translation, there are grants for travel, there's Writers in the Schools, all of the county councils and urban councils sponsor events and there are independent festivals. Most writers teach creative writing and if nothing else all the reading groups and workshops serve to lighten the bur...
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Paolo Giordano, the youngest novelist to win the prestigious Italian literary prize the Premio Strega. Giordano talks to TMO about his debut novel (now available in English) The Solitude of Prime Numbers
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Already tipped by many to be the novel of 2009, Lowboy by American author John Wray tells the story of a young schizophrenic fugitive. Wray, singled out by Granta as one of the most promising young American novelists talks to TMO about the novel, and the challenges of writing about mental illness.
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Steven Galloway stridently defends his right, as a Canadian novelist, to write about the bloodiest chapter in recent European history. He discusses his best-selling novel, The Cellist of Sarajevo with TMO.
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At no time in the recent past have writers been so integrated into the fabric of power and at the same time strikingly powerless as they are now. The contemporary novel is dominated by the elegant, safe, and nostalgic, but now, argues novelist William Wall, is not the time for the poetics of nostalgia, but for a poetics of anger.
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