It may be enough to study history in all its nuance and ambiguity for its own sake. But there is no country free of the need to find new ways of reading the past as an inspiring way of thinking about everything else, including the present.
Colm ToibinThree of my novels and a good number of my short stories are told from the point of view of men. I was brought up in a house of women.
Colm ToibinSuffering is too strong a word, but writing is serious work. I pull the stuff up from me - it's not as if it's a pleasure.
Colm Toibin