Téa Obreht is the most thrilling literary discovery in years

Anakana Schofield is part of a new wave of wonderful Irish fiction-international in scope and electrically alive.

I'm not so sure that I can teach people how to, you know, write dialogue or create plot or anything like that. But if I can get them and grab them by the scruff of the neck and say, you can do this, and if I see that fire in their eyes, that's when I think I know a writer.

He looks like the sort of man who can't afford to leave, and doesn't want to stay, and so he is doing both at once.

There are fewer and fewer Jews in Ireland, but we still have one of the most famous Jewish characters in literary history, of course, in Leopold Bloom.

That was the sort of everyday love I had to learn to contend with: if you grow up with it, it's hard to think you'll ever match it. I used to think it was difficult for children of folks who really loved each other, hard to get out from under that skin because sometimes it's just so comfortable you don't want to have to develop your own.

The Irish are great for their tunes, but all their lovesongs are sad and their warsongs happy.