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

I sit there thinking about how much courage it takes to live an ordinary life.

Good days, they come around the oddest corners.

Things in life have no real beginning, though our stories about them always do.

I gave them all the truth and none of the honesty.

Part of the beauty of fiction is that we come alive in a body that we don't own.

...and it strikes her, as she walks, that borders, like hatred, are exaggerated precisely because otherwise they would cease to exist altogether.