New Releases by John McGahern

By “arguably the most important Irish writer since Samuel Beckett” (The Guardian), a character study of a young resident of Dublin who pens erotica for a living, making his money through fantasy while denying the realities of love and sex in his life. The Pornographer is the story of a writer down on his luck, not a Dubliner but a resident of Dublin penning far from erotic tales to make ends meet. These tales—revolving around the “delicious, unending revel” of Colonel Grimshaw and the typist Mavis Carmichael—form a mordant counterpoint to his own, much more complicated existence. Thirty years old, befogged by alcohol, sensitive yet indifferent to all emotional weather, he meets the slightly older Josephine, a clever, cautiously optimistic magazine editor who soon confesses her love, and though the feeling isn’t mutual (as he makes painfully clear) the affair goes on; Josephine becomes pregnant; and, this being Ireland in the seventies, the piper must be paid. Not cruel but callous, the pornographer reels through his days, paying regular visits to a beloved aunt from the country who now lies dying in Dublin, and to his publisher, a citified and cynical Polonius who advises him to “be careful not to let life in.” As the days turn into months, he begins to wonder what letting life in might look like. What would it mean, and where would it lead, to do right by others? First published in 1979, John McGahern’s fourth novel is a character study of rare and unsparing insight. In rhythmic, lyrical prose, McGahern gives voice to the longing and self-loathing of a soul caught between a traditional world he believes he has rejected and a brave new world of advertised freedoms, sexual and otherwise, which offers no guarantee of love.

I am no good at letters. John McGahern, 1963 John McGahern is consistently hailed as one of the finest Irish writers since James Joyce and Samuel Beckett.This volume collects some of the witty, profound and unfailingly brilliant letters that he exchanged with family, friends and literary luminaries - such as Seamus Heaney, Colm Tóibín and Paul Muldoon - over the course of a well-travelled life. It is one of the major contributions to the study of Irish and British literature of the past thirty years, acting not just as a crucial insight into the life and works of a much-revered writer - but also a history of post-war Irish literature and its close ties to British and American literary life. ''One of the greatest writers of our era.'' Hilary Mantel ''McGahern brings us that tonic gift of the best fiction, the sense of truth - the sense of transparency that permits us to see imaginary lives more clearly than we see our own.'' John Updike

Faber Stories, a landmark series of individual volumes, presents masters of the short story form at work in a range of genres and styles. ''My only concern'', John McGahern once said, ''is that I get the sentence right and describe my world clearly and deeply.'' ''The Country Funeral'' witnesses three brothers, John, Philly and Fonsie Ryan, as they travel west from Dublin to Gloria Bog - the heart of the territory where so many of McGahern''s stories take place - to attend the funeral of their uncle. Depicting the customs and rituals of the day, McGahern exquisitely traces how the brothers react to the area in unexpected and tender ways, and face their own feelings about the transience of life.

Sinclair; The Sisters; Swallows; The Rockingham Shoot; The Power of Darkness John McGahern, the leading Irish novelist of his generation, wrote a substantial number of compelling scripts for radio and television. This volume brings together five of his produced works, at the heart of which sits the previously unpublished The Rockingham Shoot, a dark and powerful play for television that concerns a Nationalist teacher whose attempt to prevent his pupils beating at a pheasant shoot held in honour of the British Ambassador leads to a shockingly violent incident. Collectively, these dramatic works offer an evocative and often stark account of a deeply troubled and divided nation.

Born the child of a poor farmer in Missouri, William Stoner is urged by his parents to study new agriculture techniques at the state university. Digging instead into the texts of Milton and Shakespeare, Stoner falls under the spell of the unexpected pleasures of English literature and decides to make it his life. Stoner is the story of that life.

With this magnificently assured new novel, John McGahern reminds us why he has been called the Irish Chekhov, as he guides readers into a village in rural Ireland and deftly, compassionately traces its natural rhythms and the inner lives of its people. Here are the Ruttledges, who have forsaken the glitter of London to raise sheep and cattle, gentle Jamesie Murphy, whose appetite for gossip both charms and intimidates his neighbors, handsome John Quinn, perennially on the look-out for a new wife, and the town’s richest man, a gruff, self-made magnate known as “the Shah.” Following his characters through the course of a year, through lambing and haying seasons, market days and family visits, McGahern lays bare their passions and regrets, their uneasy relationship with the modern world, their ancient intimacy with death.

These 34 funny, tragic, bracing, and acerbic stories represent the complete short fiction of one of Ireland''s finest living writers. On struggling farms, in Dublin''s rain-drenched streets, or in parched exile in Franco''s Spain, McGahern''s characters wage a confused but touching war against the facts of life.

Een Amerikaanse boerenzoon die literatuurprofessor wordt, probeert de vele tegenslagen in zijn leven waardig te doorstaan.

An enlightening collection of essays, reviews and speeches by ''one of the greatest writers of our era'' (Hilary Mantel) and ''the Irish novelist everyone should read'' (Colm Tóibín). ''Wise and compelling ... Elegiac and graceful.'' David Mitchell ''I have admired, even loved, John McGahern''s work since his first novel .'' Melvyn Bragg McGahern did not spread himself thinly as a writer. Nearly all of his creative energy went into what was central for him: the great novels and stories that are now part of the canon of Irish and world literature. Yet he spoke out when he felt he had something worth saying and his non-fiction writings are of great interest to anyone who loves his work, and to all those interested in the recent history of Ireland. This book brings together all of McGahern''s surviving essays, reviews and speeches. In them his canon of great writers - Tolstoy, Chekhov, James, Proust and Joyce - is cited many times, with deep and subtle appreciation. His discussions of Irish writers who influenced him are generous and brilliant - among them Michael McLaverty, Ernie O''Malley and Forrest Reid. His interventions on issues he felt strongly about - sectarianism, women''s rights, the power of the church in Ireland - are lucid and far-sighted.

A haunting novel by ''one of the greatest writers of our era'' (Hilary Mantel) and ''the Irish novelist everyone should read'' (Colm Tóibín). A day, crucial and cathartic, in the life of a young Catholic schoolteacher who has returned to Ireland after a year''s sabbatical in London where he married an American divorcee. As a result he now faces certain dismissal by the school authorities. Moving from the earliest memories of both the man and the woman, the novel recreates their breaking of the shackles of guilt and duty into the acceptance of a fulfilling adult love. ''A beautiful, irresistible work of imagination. Sunday Telegraph ''Wise and compelling ... Elegiac and graceful.'' David Mitchell ''I have admired, even loved, John McGahern''s work since his first novel .'' Melvyn Bragg

Now a major motion picture: the Booker-shortlisted author''s last novel: a ''masterpiece'' ( Observer) by ''one of the greatest writers of our era'' (Hilary Mantel) Joe and Kate Ruttledge have come to Ireland from London in search of a different life. In passages of beauty and truth, the drama of a year in their lives and those of the memorable characters that move about them unfolds through the action, the rituals of work, religious observances and play. We are introduced, with deceptive simplicity, to a complete representation of existence - an enclosed world has been transformed into an Everywhere. ''McGahern brings us that tonic gift of the best fiction, the sense of truth - the sense of transparency that permits us to see imaginary lives more clearly than we see our own.'' John Updike

The iconic debut novel by ''one of the greatest writers of our era'' (Hilary Mantel) and ''the Irish novelist everyone should read'' (Colm Tóibín). Elizabeth Reegan, after years of freedom - and loneliness - marries into the enclosed Irish village of her upbringing. The children are not her own; her husband is straining to break free from the servile security of the police force; and her own life, threatened by illness, seems to be losing the last vestiges of its purpose. Moving between tragedy and savage comedy, desperation and joy, John McGahern''s first novel is one of haunting power. ''Marvellous.'' Susan Hill, Times ''Reminds one of the young Joyce.'' Spectator ''Wise and compelling ... Elegiac and graceful.'' David Mitchell ''I have admired, even loved, John McGahern''s work since his first novel .'' Melvyn Bragg

''As wise and compelling a book as any of his elegiac and graceful novels.'' David MitchellThis is the story of John McGahern''s childhood; of his mother''s death, his father''s anger and bafflement, and his own discovery of literature.''Long before Frank McCourt made an entire industry out of twinkly eyed accounts of the poverty and institutionalised brutality of mid-twentieth-century rural Ireland, John McGahern, Ireland''s greatest living novelist, had already shone wise and unsparing light on this same world ... Memoir is the full, unadorned story of his childhood and adolescence in Leitrim ... His finest book yet.'' Stephanie Merritt, Observer''In a tremendously distinguished career, he has never written more movingly, or with a sharper eye.'' Andrew Motion, Guardian''I have admired, even loved, John McGahern''s work since his first novel ... Memoir strips the skin off his fiction as he faces a desperate early life with great force and tenderness.'' Melvyn Bragg

From award-winning author John McGahern, a memoir of his childhood in the Irish countryside and the beginnings of his life as a writer. McGahern describes his early years as one of seven children growing up in rural County Leitrim, a childhood was marked by his father’s violent nature and the early death of his beloved mother. Tracing the memories of home through both people and place, McGahern details family life and the beginnings of a writing career that would take him far from home, and then back again. Haunting and illuminating, All Will Be Well is an unforgettable portrait of Ireland and one of its most beloved writers.

For this revised edition, completed shortly before his death, John McGahern edited and deleted a number of stories from the Collected Stories that first appeared in 1992. This is the authorised edition of a modern classic.

John Butler Yeats was the father of the poet W.B. Yeats and the painter Jack Yeats. This selection of his letters covers the period 1898 to his death in 1922. They are rich in ideas, opinions and gossip, and discuss art, and Irish affairs.