Best Selling Books by Colm Toibin

* OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK * INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * * NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2024 BY TIME MAGAZINE, THE NEW YORKER, WASHINGTON POST, VULTURE, GLAMOUR, FRESH AIR, NPR, THE GUARDIAN, THE ECONOMIST, THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT, THE TIMES (London), THE IRISH TIMES, THE NEW STATESMAN, THE INDEPENDENT, THE OBSERVER, and more * “Stunning.” —People * “Dazzling yet devastating...Tóibín is simply one of the world’s best living literary writers.” —The Boston Globe * “Momentous and hugely affecting.” —The Wall Street Journal * From the beloved, critically acclaimed, bestselling author comes a spectacularly moving novel featuring Eilis Lacey, the complex and enigmatic heroine of Brooklyn, Tóibín’s most popular work in twenty years. Eilis Lacey is Irish, married to Tony Fiorello, a plumber and one of four Italian American brothers, all of whom live in neighboring houses on a cul-de-sac in Lindenhurst, Long Island, with their wives and children and Tony’s parents, a huge extended family. It is the spring of 1976 and Eilis is now forty with two teenage children. Though her ties to Ireland remain stronger than those that hold her to her new land and home, she has not returned in decades. One day, when Tony is at work an Irishman comes to the door asking for Eilis by name. He tells her that his wife is pregnant with Tony’s child and that when the baby is born, he will not raise it but instead deposit it on Eilis’s doorstep. It is what Eilis does—and what she refuses to do—in response to this stunning news that makes Tóibín’s novel so riveting and suspenseful. Long Island is a gorgeous story “about a woman thrashing against the constraints of fate” (Maureen Corrigan, Fresh Air). It is “a wonder, rich with yearning and regret” (Star Tribune, Minneapolis).

A New York Times Notable Book, Critic’s Top Pick, and Top Ten Book of Historical Fiction Named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post, NPR, Vogue, The Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg Businessweek u200bFrom one of today’s most brilliant and beloved novelists, a dazzling, epic family saga set across a half-century spanning World War I, the rise of Hitler, World War II, and the Cold War that is “a feat of literary sorcery in its own right” (Oprah Daily). The Magician opens in a provincial German city at the turn of the twentieth century, where the boy, Thomas Mann, grows up with a conservative father, bound by propriety, and a Brazilian mother, alluring and unpredictable. Young Mann hides his artistic aspirations from his father and his homosexual desires from everyone. He is infatuated with one of the richest, most cultured Jewish families in Munich, and marries the daughter Katia. They have six children. On a holiday in Italy, he longs for a boy he sees on a beach and writes the story Death in Venice. He is the most successful novelist of his time, winner of the Nobel Prize in literature, a public man whose private life remains secret. He is expected to lead the condemnation of Hitler, whom he underestimates. His oldest daughter and son, leaders of Bohemianism and of the anti-Nazi movement, share lovers. He flees Germany for Switzerland, France and, ultimately, America, living first in Princeton and then in Los Angeles. In this “exquisitely sensitive” (The Wall Street Journal) novel, Tóibín has crafted “a complex but empathetic portrayal of a writer in a lifelong battle against his innermost desires, his family, and the tumultuous times they endure” (Time), and “you’ll find yourself savoring every page” (Vogue).

Winner of the Costa Novel Award and longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Colm Tóibín''s internationally bestselling novel is a story of devastating emotional power. At the centre of Colm Tóibín''s internationally celebrated novel is Eilis Lacey, one among many of her generation who has come of age in 1950s Ireland but cannot find work at home. When she receives a job offer in America, it is clear to everyone that she must go. Leaving her family and country behind, Eilis heads for unfamiliar Brooklyn, and to a crowded boarding house where the landlady''s intense scrutiny and the small jealousies of her fellow residents only deepen her isolation. Slowly, however, the pain of parting and a longing for home are buried beneath the rhythms of her new life—until she begins to realize that she has found a sort of happiness. But just as Eilis begins to fall in love, tragic news summons her back to Ireland, where she unexpectedly finds herself facing an impossible decision.

Presents a fictionalized study based upon the many biographical materials and family accounts of nineteenth-century novelist Henry James and examines his life of loneliness, despair, and failed relationships.

For Colm Toíbín and Carmen Callil there is no difference between literary and commercial writing - there is only the good novel: engrossing, inspirational, compelling. In their selection of the best 200 novels written since 1950, the editors make a case for the best and the best-loved works and argue why each should be considered a modern classic. Enlightening, often unexpected and always engaging this tour through the world of fiction is full of surprises, forgotten masterpieces and a valuable guide to what to read next. Authors in the collection include Agatha Christie, Georgette Heyer, Daphne du Maurier, Patrick Hamilton, Carson McCullers, J. D. Salinger, Bernard Malamud; Flannery O''Connor, Mulk Raj Anand, Raymond Chandler, L. P. Hartley, Amos Tutuola, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Samuel Beckett, Patricia Highsmith, Chinua Achebe, Isak Dineson, Alan Sillitoe, Ivy Compton-Burnett, Grace Paley, Harper Lee, Olivia Manning and Mordecai Richler.

In the ancient town of Ephesus, Mary lives alone, years after her son''s crucifixion. She has no interest in collaborating with the authors of the Gospel – her keepers, who provide her with food and shelter and visit her regularly. She does not agree that her son is the Son of God; nor that his death was "worth it;" nor that the "group of misfits he gathered around him, men who could not look a woman in the eye," were holy disciples. Mary judges herself ruthlessly (she did not stay at the foot of the Cross until her son died – she fled, to save herself), and is equally harsh on her judgement of others. This woman who we know from centuries of paintings and scripture as the docile, loving, silent, long-suffering, obedient, worshipful mother of Christ becomes a tragic heroine with the relentless eloquence of Electra or Medea or Antigone. Tóibín''s tour de force of imagination and language is a portrait so vivid and convincing that our image of Mary will be forever transformed.

From the internationally celebrated author of The Master, winner of the 2006 International Dublin Literary Award. Mothers and Sons is a deeply penetrating and beautifully written meditation on the dramas surrounding this most elemental of relationships. Each of the nine stories focuses on a moment in which an unspoken balance shifts; in which a mother or son do battle, or experience a sudden crisis, thus leaving their conception of who they are subtly or seriously altered. A son buries his mother and goes out to a drug-fuelled rave on a remote beach near Dublin. A mother sings about treacherous love to a rapt crowd of musicians in a local pub. And in “A Long Winter,” Colm Tóibín’s finest piece of fiction to date, a man goes searching for his mother in the snow-covered Pyrenees. Psychologically intricate and emotionally incisive, each finely wrought story teases out the delicate and difficult strands woven between mothers and sons. This is an acute, masterful, and moving collection that confirms Tóibín as a great prose stylist of our time.

From the internationally celebrated author of Brooklyn and The Master, and winner of the International Dublin Literary Award, comes a stunning new book of fiction. In the captivating stories that make up The Empty Family, Colm Tóibín delineates with a tender and unique sensibility, lives of unspoken or unconscious longing, of individuals often willingly cast adrift from their history. From the young Pakistani immigrant who seeks some kind of permanence in a strange town, to the Irish woman reluctantly returning to Dublin and discovering a city that refuses to acknowledge her long absence, each of Tóibín''s stories manage to contain whole worlds: stories of fleeing the past and returning home, of family threads lost and ultimately regained. Like Tóibín''s celebrated novels, and his previous short story collection, Mothers and Sons, reviewed on the front page of the New York Times Book Review, The Empty Family will further confirm Tóibín''s status as "his generation''s most gifted writer of love''s complicated, contradictory power." (Los Angeles Times)

""IT ALL STARTED WITH MY BALLS." So begins Colm Tóibín''s fabulously compelling essay, laced with humor, about his diagnosis and treatment for cancer. Tóibín survives, but he has entered, as he says, "the age of one ball." The second essay in this seductive collection is a memoir about growing up in the 1950s and ''60s in the small town of Enniscorthy in County Wexford, the setting for many of Tóibín''s novels and stories, including Brooklyn, The Blackwater Lightship, and Nora Webster. Tóibín describes his education by priests, several of whom were condemned years later for abuse. He writes about Irish history and literature, and about the long, tragic journey toward legal and social acceptance of homosexuality.In Part Two, Tóibín profiles three complex and vexing popes--John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis. And in Part Three, he writes about a trio of authors who reckon with religion in their fiction. The final essay, "Alone in Venice," is a gorgeous account of Tóibín''s journey, at the height of the pandemic, to the beloved city where he has set some of his most dazzling scenes. The streets, canals, churches, and museums were empty. He had them to himself, an experience both haunting and exhilarating."--

"Originally published in Great Britain in 1990 by Serpent''s Tail"--T.p. verso.

Colm Tóibín knows the languages of the outsider, the secret keeper, the gay man or woman. He knows the covert and overt language of homosexuality in literature. In Love in a Dark Time, he also describes the solace of finding like-minded companions through reading. Colm Tóibín examines the life and work of some of the greatest and most influential writers of the past two centuries, figures whose homosexuality remained hidden or oblique for much of their lives, either by choice or necessity. The larger world couldn''t know about their sexuality, but in their private lives, and in the spirit of their work, the laws of desire defined their expression. This is an intimate encounter with Mann, Baldwin, Bishop, and with the contemporary poets Thom Gunn and Mark Doty. Through their work, Tóibín is able to come to terms with his own inner desires—his interest in secret erotic energy, his admiration for courageous figures, and his abiding fascination with sadness and tragedy. Tóibín looks both at writers forced to disguise their true experience on the page and at readers who find solace and sexual identity by reading between the lines.

* A Washington Post Notable Fiction Book of the Year * Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, The Guardian, The Boston Globe, St. Louis Dispatch From the thrilling imagination of bestselling, award-winning Colm Tóibín comes a retelling of the story of Clytemnestra and her children—“brilliant…gripping…high drama…made tangible and graphic in Tóibín’s lush prose” (Booklist, starred review). “I have been acquainted with the smell of death.” So begins Clytemnestra’s tale of her own life in ancient Mycenae, the legendary Greek city from which her husband King Agamemnon left when he set sail with his army for Troy. Clytemnestra rules Mycenae now, along with her new lover Aegisthus, and together they plot the bloody murder of Agamemnon on the day of his return after nine years at war. Judged, despised, cursed by gods, Clytemnestra reveals the tragic saga that led to these bloody actions: how her husband deceived her eldest daughter Iphigeneia with a promise of marriage to Achilles, only to sacrifice her; how she seduced and collaborated with the prisoner Aegisthus; how Agamemnon came back with a lover himself; and how Clytemnestra finally achieved her vengeance for his stunning betrayal—his quest for victory, greater than his love for his child. House of Names “is a disturbingly contemporary story of a powerful woman caught between the demands of her ambition and the constraints on her gender…Never before has Tóibín demonstrated such range,” (The Washington Post). He brings a modern sensibility and language to an ancient classic, and gives this extraordinary character new life, so that we not only believe Clytemnestra’s thirst for revenge, but applaud it. Told in four parts, this is a fiercely dramatic portrait of a murderess, who will herself be murdered by her own son, Orestes. It is Orestes’s story, too: his capture by the forces of his mother’s lover Aegisthus, his escape and his exile. And it is the story of the vengeful Electra, who watches over her mother and Aegisthus with cold anger and slow calculation, until, on the return of her brother, she has the fates of both of them in her hands.

The streets of Buenos Aires are empty at night, and people notice nothing because they have trained themselves not to see. This is Argentina in the time of the generals. Richard Garay lives alone with his mother, hiding his homosexuality from her and from the world. Stifled by a job he despises, he finds himself willing to take chances, both sexual and professional. But in the aftermath of the Falklands War, new freedoms seem possible, and the arrival of two American diplomats offer him hope and the prospect of making his fortune. As his country slowly makes its peace with the outside world, Richard tentatively begins a love affair—but the Faustian bargain he has made with experience gradually darkens. The Story of the Night is a powerful and moving mix of politics, passion, and intrigue that confirms Tóibín as one of the finest writers of his generation.

From the author of The Master and Brooklyn, Colm Tóibín weaves together the lives of three generations of estranged women as they reunite to witness and mourn the death of a brother, a son, and a grandson. It is Ireland in the early 1990s. Helen, her mother, Lily, and her grandmother, Dora, have come together to tend to Helen''s brother, Declan, who is dying of AIDS. With Declan''s two friends, the six of them are forced to plumb the shoals of their own histories and to come to terms with each other.u200b Shortlisted for the Booker Prize, The Blackwater Lightship is a deeply resonant story about three generations of an estranged family reuniting to mourn an untimely death. In spare, luminous prose, Colm Tóibín explores the nature of love and the complex emotions inside a family at war with itself. Hailed as "a genuine work of art" (Chicago Tribune), this is a novel about the capacity of stories to heal the deepest wounds.

In this fascinating, informative, and entertaining collection, internationally acclaimed, award-winning author Colm Tóibín turns his attention to the intricacies of family relationships in literature and writing. In pieces that range from the importance of aunts (and the death of parents) in the English nineteenth-century novel to the relationship between fathers and sons in the writing of James Baldwin and Barack Obama, Colm Tóibín illuminates not only the intimate connections between writers and their families but also, with wit and rare tenderness, articulates the great joy of reading their work. In the piece on the Notebooks of Tennessee Williams, Tóibín reveals an artist "alone and deeply fearful and unusually selfish" and one profoundly tormented by his sister''s mental illness. Through the relationship between W.B. Yeats and his father, or Thomas Mann and his children, or J.M. Synge and his mother, Tóibín examines a world of family relations, richly comic or savage in its implications. In Roddy Doyle''s writing on his parents we see an Ireland reinvented. From the dreams and nightmares of John Cheever''s journals Tóibín makes flesh this darkly comic misanthrope and his relationship to his wife and his children.The majority of these pieces were previously published in the Londron Review of Books, the New York Review Review of Books, and the Dublin Review. Three of the thirteen pieces have never appeared before.

Por primera vez en castellano, los mejores cuentos del autor de Brooklyn, ganador de los premios Impac y Forster. Cólm Tóibín se ha consolidado como uno de los grandes narradores contemporáneos de la literatura anglosajona. Comparado a menudo con Henry James, uno de sus grandes referentes, en nuestro país empieza a obtener el reconocimiento que ya tiene en Europa y en Estados Unidos. En este volumen, que recopila sus mejores cuentos, Tóibín aborda los grandes asuntos de su universo literario: las relaciones entre madres e hijos, la sociedad de Dublín, la imagen del hogar, el exilio y la inmigración e incluso nos ofrece un retrato espléndido y en absoluto convencional de Barcelona, una ciudad que conoce muy bien porque vivió en ella durante los años de la transición. Dueño de una prosa precisa y armónica y de una gran capacidad de penetración psicológica, Colm Tóibín es ya, gracias tanto a sus novelas como a sus relatos, un nuevo maestro. ENGLISH DESCRIPTION Now for the first time in Spanish, the best stories from the internationally celebrated author of Brooklyn, and winner of the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Cólm Tóibín is well recognized as one of the great contemporary narrators in English literature. often compared to Henry James, a writer who he has often referenced, Tóibín brings to this stunning collection an acute understanding of human frailty and longing. These are haunting, profoundly moving stories by a writer who is himself a master. In this collection, which compiles his best stories, Tóibín tackles the great issues in his literary universe: relationships between mothers and their children, Dublin society, the idea of home, exile and immigration. He also offers a splendid portrait of conventional Barcelona, a city that knows very well for having lived there during the transitional years. Owner of a precise and harmonious prose, and with a great ability to penetrate psychologically, Colm Tóibín is already, thanks to both his novels and his stories, a master himself.

From the multiple award-winning author of The Master and Brooklyn, an illuminating look at Irish culture, history, and literature through the lives of the fathers of three of Ireland’s greatest writers—Oscar Wilde''s father, William Butler Yeats''s father, and James Joyce''s father—“Thrilling, wise, and resonant, this book aptly unites Tóibín’s novelistic gifts for psychology and emotional nuance with his talents as a reader and critic, in incomparably elegant prose” (The New York Times Book Review). Colm Tóibín begins his incisive, revelatory Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know with a walk through the Dublin streets where he went to university and where three Irish literary giants came of age. Oscar Wilde, writing about his relationship with his father stated: “Whenever there is hatred between two people there is bond or brotherhood of some kind…you loathed each other not because you were so different but because you were so alike.” W.B. Yeats wrote of his father, a painter: “It is this infirmity of will which has prevented him from finishing his pictures. The qualities I think necessary to success in art or life seemed to him egotism.” James’s father was perhaps the most quintessentially Irish, widely loved, garrulous, a singer, and drinker with a volatile temper, who drove his son from Ireland. “An entertaining and revelatory book about the vexed relationships between these three pairs of difficult fathers and their difficult sons” (The Wall Street Journal), Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know illustrates the surprising ways these fathers surface in the work of their sons. “As charming as [they are] illuminating, these stories of fathers and sons provide a singular look at an extraordiu00adnary confluence of genius” (Bookpage). Tóibín recounts the resistance to English cultural domination, the birth of modern Irish cultural identity, and the extraordinary contributions of these complex and masterful authors. “This immersive book holds literary scholarship to be a heartfelt, heavenly pursuit” (The Washington Post).

Colm Tóibín’s “lovely, understated” novel that “proceeds with stately grace” (The Washington Post Book World) about an uncompromising judge whose principles, when brought home to his own family, are tragic. Eamon Redmond is a judge in Ireland’s high court, a completely legal creature who is just beginning to discover how painfully unconnected he is from other human beings. With effortless fluency, Colm Tóibín reconstructs the history of Eamon’s relationships—with his father, his first “girl,” his wife, and the children who barely know him—and he writes about Eamon’s affection for the Irish coast with such painterly skill that the land itself becomes a character. The result is a novel of stunning power, “seductive and absorbing” (USA Today).

No book since Mrs Shelley''s Frankenstein, or indeed any other at all has come near yours in originality, or terror - Poe is nowhere..."-Charlotte Stoker (Mother of Bram Stoker). Originally published in 1897, Bram Stoker''s Dracula has spawned countless new editions, inspired over fifty films, and hundreds of reimaginings. The iconic and terrifying character of Stoker''s imagination has permeated our conciousness in such away that Dracula is the seminal vampire of popular culture. Set across London and into the darkest corners of Eastern Europe, Dracula is told through the journal entries and letters of its protagonists as they strive to survive the presence of Count Dracula in their lives. Young lawyer Jonathan Harker travels to Transylvania to assist in a land transaction, but finds himself trapped in the Count''s castle, tormented by strange and unearthly occurrences. After a miraculous escape, he returns to England, only to find that the Count has followed him to London and has begun tracking his fiancé, Mina... Reprinted in its original form, this edition of Dracula is perfect for a first time reader, or as a classic to keep forever.

Struggling with grief and financial hardships after the death of her beloved husband, widow Nora struggles to support her four children and clings to secrecy in the intrusive community of her childhood before finding her voice. By the award-winning author of The Master and Brooklyn

The Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s has been popularly perceived as a genocide attributable to the British government. In professional historical circles, however, such singular thinking was dismissed many years ago, as evidenced by the scathing academic response to Cecil Woodham-Smith''s 1963 classic, The Great Hunger, which, in addition to presenting a vivid and horrifying picture of the human suffering, made strong accusations against the British government''s failure to act. And while British governmental sins of omission and commission during the famine played their part, there is a broader context of land agitation and regional influences of class conflict within Ireland that also contributed to the starvation of more than a million people. This remarkable book opens a door to understanding all sides to this tragedy with an absorbing history provided by novelist Colm Toibin that is supported by a collection of key documents selected by historian Diarmaid Ferriter. An important piece of revisionist thinking, The Irish Famine: A Documentary is sure to become the classic primer for this lamentable period of Irish history.

From the New York Times best-selling author of Brooklyn, Colm Tóibín’s first collection of poetry explores sexuality, religion, and belonging through a modern lens Fans of Colm Tóibín’s novels, including The Magician, The Master, and Nora Webster, will relish the opportunity to re-encounter Tóibín in verse. Vinegar Hill explores the liminal space between private experiences and public events as Tóibín examines a wide range of subjects—politics, queer love, reflections on literary and artistic greats, living through COVID, and facing mortality. The poems reflect a life well-traveled and well-lived; from growing up in the town of Enniscorthy, wandering the streets of Dublin, and crossing the bridges of Venice to visiting the White House, readers will travel through familiar locations and new destinations through Tóibín’s unique lens. Within this rich collection of poems written over the course of several decades, shot through with keen observation, emotion, and humor, Tóibín offers us lines and verses to provoke, ponder, and cherish.

In this collection of essays, ten leading writers from different countries consider the conflicts that have informed their own literary lives. 1914-Goodbye to All That borrows its title from Robert Graves''s "bitter leave-taking of England" in which he writes not only of the First World War but the questions it raised: how to live, how to live with each other, and how to write. Interpreting this title as broadly and ambiguously as Graves intended, these essays mark the War''s centenary by reinvigorating these questions. The book includes Elif Shafak on an inheritance of silence in Turkey, Ali Smith on lost voices in Scotland, Xiaolu Guo on the 100,000 Chinese sent to the Front, Daniel Kehlmann on hypnotism in Berlin, Colm Toibin on Lady Gregory losing her son fighting for Britain as she fought for an independent Ireland, Kamila Shamsie on reimagining Karachi, Erwin Mortier on occupied Belgium''s legacy of shame, NoViolet Bulawayo on Zimbabwe and clarity, Ales Steger on resisting history in Slovenia, and Jeanette Winterson on what art is for. Contributors include: Ali Smith - Scotland Ales Steger - Slovenia Jeanette Winterson - England Elif Shafak - Turkey NoViolet Bulawayo - Zimbabwe Colm Toíbín - Ireland Xiaolu Guo - China Erwin Mortier - Belgium Kamila Shamsie - Pakistan Daniel Kehlmann - Germany

Colm Tóibín’s personal account of encountering James Baldwin’s work, published in Baldwin’s centenary year. Acclaimed Irish novelist Colm Tóibín first read James Baldwin just after turning eighteen. He had completed his first year at an Irish university and was struggling to free himself from a religious upbringing. He had even considered entering a seminary and was searching for literature that would offer illumination and insight. Inspired by the novel Go Tell It on the Mountain, Tóibín found a writer who would be a lifelong companion and exemplar. From On James Baldwin Baldwin was interested in the hidden and dramatic areas in his own being, and was prepared as a writer to explore difficult truths about his own private life. In his fiction, he had to battle for the right of his protagonists to choose or influence their destinies. He knew about guilt and rage and bitter privacies in a way that few of his White novelist contemporaries did. And this was not simply because he was Black and homosexual; the difference arose from the very nature of his talent, from the texture of his sensibility. “All art,” he wrote, “is a kind of confession, more or less oblique. All artists, if they are to survive, are forced, at last, to tell the whole story, to vomit the anguish up.” On James Baldwin is a magnificent contemporary author’s tribute to one of his most consequential literary progenitors.

If readers have ever been too frightened to start Hannibal, couldn''t wait for The Long Goodbye to end, or wondered what should be next on their summer reading list, this fascinating book is exactly what they need. Readers will find short and insightful entries on 200 of the greatest novels and authors of our time including John Updike, Thomas Harris, Harper Lee, Annie Proulx, and more.

Traducere și note de Mihnea Gafița Rathbones Folio Prize 2022 • Cea mai bună carte a anului 2021 în Washington Post, Vogue, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg Businessweek și la NPR • New York Times Notable Book, Critic’s Top Pick, Top 10 Books of Historical Fiction, Top 10 Sunday Times Bestseller • Roman în curs de apariție în peste 20 de țări. O existență care începe aparent banal: un oraș hanseatic, o mamă fără teama convențiilor sociale, un tată rigid, o rivalitate supărătoare cu fratele mai mare. Și totuși, dintr-o istorie familială ce nu pare să favorizeze apariția unui scriitor important, își trag seva o operă literară majoră și forța inepuizabilă de a supraviețui tragediilor politice din prima jumătate a secolului XX. Magicianul are tensiunea și vastitatea romanului canonic și îi oferă cititorului șansa să trăiască o viață excepțională din interior, aceea a unui scriitor care a adunat elogii și a unui om care nu și-a depășit, până la sfârșit, contradicțiile – Thomas Mann.

Available for the first time in a beautiful standalone edition, one of Colm Tóibín’s finest short stories and “the most striking example of Tóibin’s emotional control” (The Guardian), “A Long Winter,” is set in the mountains of Catalonia in Spain—includes a new afterword by the author on how he came to write the story. A young man named Miquel returns to his family in the Catalan Pyrenees upon completing his military service. His younger brother, Jordi, will be departing for his service a week after Miquel’s arrival. He will be gone for two years. Miquel notices their mother’s increasingly erratic behavior and understands that she is drinking. As she becomes increasingly unstable, her husband resorts to drastic measures. Unable to abide his betrayal and her own grief, she walks off into the mountains. A blizzard sets in and the search for her is futile. No one will find her until the spring thaw arrives. A gorgeous story of loss, grief, and longing, “A Long Winter” describes an extraordinary bond between a mother and son and a haunting portrait of a family in crisis. Tóibín’s powers of imagination and transfixing emotional insight are on full display.

Toibin, a "collapsed" Catholic, offers an odyssey into his inner self as he reckons with the religious demons of his past. Here are the rituals, the pilgrimages, the shrines, the fanatics, the charlatans and the sincerely devout Toibin encountered on his journeys.