Modern Ireland Seen Through One Sharp Personal Lens
Modern Irish history feels immediate here because national change is tied to lived experience. Fintan O'Toole brings politics, culture and memory together with clarity and bite, avoiding the distance of a dry historical overview. It is thoughtful, accessible and distinctly relevant for Irish readers.
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We Don't Know Ourselves
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Modern Ireland Seen Through One Sharp Personal Lens
Modern Irish history feels immediate here because national change is tied to lived experience. Fintan O'Toole brings politics, culture and memory together with clarity and bite, avoiding the distance of a dry historical overview. It is thoughtful, accessible and distinctly relevant for Irish readers.
- Book Synopsis
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The #1 Irish Times bestseller
WINNER of the An Post Irish Book Awards
'A clear-eyed, myth-dispelling masterpiece' Marian Keyes
'Sweeping, authoritative and profoundly intelligent' Colm Tóibìn, Guardian
'With the pace and twists of an enthralling novel' Irish Times
'Evocative, moving, funny and furious' Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times
'An enthralling, panoramic book' Patrick Radden Keefe
'A book that will remain important for a very long time' An Post Irish Book Award
We Don't Know Ourselves is a very personal vision of recent Irish history from the year of O'Toole's birth, 1958, down to the present. Ireland has changed almost out of recognition during those decades, and Fintan O'Toole's life coincides with that arc of transformation. The book is a brilliant interweaving of memories (though this is emphatically not a memoir) and engrossing social and historical narrative. This was the era of Eamon de Valera, Jack Lynch, Charles Haughey and John Charles McQuaid, of sectarian civil war in the North and the Pope's triumphant visit in 1979, but also of those who began to speak out against the ruling consensus - feminists, advocates for the rights of children, gay men and women coming out of the shadows. We Don't Know Ourselves is an essential book for anyone who wishes to understand modern Ireland.
Ideal for readers who:
- Love sharp non-fiction about modern Ireland and rapid national change.
- Appreciate history told through lived experience, culture and memory.
- Prefer political writing with clarity, bite and a strongly personal perspective.
- Read books that make recent Irish history feel immediate and readable.
- About The Author
- Fintan O'Toole is the author of Heroic Failure, Ship of Fools, A Traitor's Kiss, White Savage and other acclaimed books. He is a columnist for the Irish Times and the Milberg Professor of Irish Letters at Princeton University. He writes regularly for the Guardian, New York Review of Books, New York Times and other British and American journals.
- Product Details
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- ISBN
- 9781784978341
- Format
- Paperback
- Publisher
- Apollo, (01 September 2022)
- Number of Pages
- 624
- Weight
- 457 grams
- Language
- English
- Dimensions
- 196 x 128 x 46 mm
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