Colm Tóibín: why I left Ireland for Ancient Greece

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Features

Colm Tóibín on Baldwin’s confessional Giovanni’s Room

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Extracts

Colm Toibin talks about the novel 'Brooklyn'

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Podcasts

The Penguin Podcast: Colm Tóibín

Penguin Readers Level 5: Brooklyn (ELT Graded Reader)

Penguin Readers is an ELT graded reader series for learners of English as a foreign language. With carefully adapted text, new illustrations and language learning exercises, the print edition also includes instructions to access supporting material online. 
 
Titles include popular classics, exciting contemporary fiction, and thought-provoking non-fiction, introducing language learners to bestselling authors and compelling content. 
 
The eight levels of Penguin Readers follow the Common European Framework of Reference for language learning (CEFR). Exercises at the back of each Reader help language learners to practise grammar, vocabulary, and key exam skills. Before, during and after-reading questions test readers' story comprehension and develop vocabulary. 
 
Brooklyn, a Level 5 Reader, is B1 in the CEFR framework. The text is made up of sentences with up to four clauses, introducing present perfect continuous, past perfect, reported speech and second conditional. It is well supported by illustrations, which appear regularly. 
 
When Eilis gets a job in Brooklyn, New York, she leaves her family in Ireland to travel to a new country. It is an exciting adventure, with lots of new people and things to learn, but Eilis misses Ireland. When she meets someone special, Eilis must choose between her past and her future. 
 
Visit the Penguin Readers website 
Exclusively with the print edition, readers can unlock online resources including a digital book, audio edition, lesson plans and answer keys.

Colm Tóibín was born in Enniscorthy in 1955. He is the author of nine novels including The Master, Brooklyn, The Testament of Mary and Nora Webster and, most recently, House of Names. His work has been shortlisted for the Booker three times, won the Costa Novel Award and the Impac Award. He has also published two collections of stories and many works of non-fiction. He lives in Dublin.

With carefully adapted text, new illustrations, language practise activities and additional online resources, the Penguin Readers series introduces language learners to bestselling authors and compelling content. Titles include popular classics, exciting contemporary fiction, and thought-provoking non-fiction. 
 
Brooklyn, a Level 5 Reader, is B1 in the CEFR framework. The text is made up of sentences with up to four clauses, introducing present perfect continuous, past perfect, reported speech and second conditional. It is well supported by illustrations, which appear regularly. 
 
When Eilis gets a job in Brooklyn, New York, she leaves her family in Ireland to travel to a new country. It is an exciting adventure, with lots of new people and things to learn, but Eilis misses Ireland. When she meets someone special, Eilis must choose between her past and her future.

Winner of the Rathbones Folio Prize

The Magician

THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLER 
WINNER OF THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE 2022 
SHORTLISTED FOR THE WALTER SCOTT PRIZE FOR HISTORICAL FICTION 2022 
 
From one of our greatest living writers comes a sweeping novel of unrequited love and exile, war and family. 
 
The Magician tells the story of Thomas Mann, whose life was filled with great acclaim and contradiction. He would find himself on the wrong side of history in the First World War, cheerleading the German army, but have a clear vision of the future in the second, anticipating the horrors of Nazism. 
 
He would have six children and keep his homosexuality hidden; he was a man forever connected to his family and yet bore witness to the ravages of suicide. He would write some of the greatest works of European literature, and win the Nobel Prize, but would never return to the country that inspired his creativity. 
 
Through one life, Colm Tóibín tells the breathtaking story of the twentieth century. 
___________________________________ 
 
'As with everything Colm Tóibín sets his masterful hand to, The Magician is a great imaginative achievement -- immensely readable, erudite, worldly and knowing, and fully realized' - Richard Ford 
 
'No living novelist dramatizes artistic creation as profoundly, as luminously, as Colm Tóibín . . . reading him is among the deepest pleasures our literature can offer' - Garth Greenwell 
 
'This is not just a whole life in a novel, it's a whole world' - Katharina Volckmer

This is an enormously ambitious book, one in which the intimate and the momentous are exquisitely balanced. It is the story of a man who spent almost all of his adult life behind a desk or going for sedate little post-prandial walks with his wife. From this sedentary existence Tóibín has fashioned an epic

I love everything Colm Tóibín has written and The Magician is another masterpiece . . . Historical fiction at its best

The Magician, recreates as biographical fiction the life, thoughts and achievements of Thomas Mann. It is dark, beautifully constructed and, I think, as near as one author can get to entering the mind of another

The Magician uses the life of Thomas Mann to explore the complex relationships between intimacy and history, public and private lives, and the slippery nature of creativity itself. I found it mesmerising

Taking on Thomas Mann is no easy task, but Tóibín's fictional account of the inner life of the great German novelist is masterful

The Magician is not a biography but a work of art, an emotional reckoning with a century of change, centred on a man who tried to stand upright but was swayed by the winds of that change

In a novel of many moods, its every page rings true

An expansive yet deeply personal exploration of the life of exiled German writer Thomas Mann . . . Containing beautiful observations on life and literature, and a sweeping sense of historical scale, The Magician remains tightly written and wryly funny

Both epic and intimate, The Magician is most successful in its moving portrait of three generations of sprawling, loving, fractious family life . . . a triumph

A sweeping overview of Thomas Mann's life

The Irish novelist famed for Brooklyn imagines the world of the German Nobel-winning writer Thomas Mann and his secret desire for handsome young men, in what the Times reviewer John Self says is his best novel yet

As with everything Colm Tóibín sets his masterful hand to, The Magician is a great imaginative achievement -- immensely readable, erudite, worldly and knowing, and fully realized

Colm Tóibín has already written several truly extraordinary novels. The Magician may be the very best of them

The Magician is a remarkable achievement. Mann himself, one feels certain, would approve

This graceful novel is a moving and intimate portrait by one master of another . . . It is a stunning tribute to the great man, and a vital story for now

A masterpiece, vast and luminous . . . witty and profound and truthful

Extensively researched and lyrically wrought . . . a complex but empathetic portrayal of a writer in a lifelong battle against his innermost desires, his family and the tumultuous times they endure

No living novelist dramatizes artistic creation as profoundly, as luminously, as Colm Tóibín, or conveys so well the entanglement of imagination and desire . . . Reading him is among the deepest pleasures our literature can offer

Garth Greenwell, author of Cleanness and What Belongs to You

This is not just a whole life in a novel, it's a whole world - with all its wonders, tragedies and sacrifices. I loved every page of this beautiful and immersive journey into The Magician's mind

Katharina Volckmer, author of The Appointment

Toibin's symphonic and moving novel humanizes [Mann] . . . Maximalist in scope but intimate in feeling

Mr. Tóibín wields a dramatically stripped-down prose style . . . epiphanies, when they come, are all the more powerful after so much restraint . . . What Mr. Tóibín's exquisitely sensitive novel gets right, in a way that biography rarely does, is its acknowledgement of unknowability

A haunting and heartrendingly intimate portrait of its protagonist, the German writer Thomas Mann, and a richly drawn sense of place . . . [a] vast and stunningly realized world . . . you'll find yourself savouring every page

An incisive and witty novel that shows what good company the Nobelist and his family might have been

It's a work of huge imaginative sympathy . . . quite thrilling . . . it takes a writer of Tóibín's calibre to understand how the seemingly inconsequential details of life can be transmogrified, turned into art

The hallmarks of Tóibín's diaphanous prose - stillness, precision, intimacy- remain intact despite the wideranging, voluminous material of Mann's biography . . . in a quietly epic tale, Tóibín expertly captures the layers of a richly multiple self and surely reasserts his own status as one of our greatest living novelists

Wonderful . . . a very accomplished and enjoyable novel

Simultaneously intimate and transnational . . . this is deeply engaging, serious and beautiful writing that carries its echoing questions with grace

Compelling . . . Superb characterisation and sharp insights throughout make this an immensely enjoyable novel

The Magician, Colm Tóibín's new novel about Mann, resists the shallow gestures of Hollywood biopics, reaching for something mainstream film couldn't get at, or wouldn't bother with. How does an artist create, and can a true artist live as the rest of us do?

This meticulously woven novel re-creates the life of Thomas Mann . . . An ode to a 20th-century genius and a feat of literary sorcery in its own right

The personal and public history is compelling . . . an intriguing view of a writer who well deserves another turn on the literary stage

[The Magician] vibrates with the strength of Mann's visions and the sublimity of Tóibín's mellifluous prose. Tóibín has surpassed himself

This vibrates with the strength of Mann's visions and the sublimity of Tóibín's mellifluous prose. Tóibín has surpassed himself

Compelling . . . Tóibín succeeds in conveying his fascination with the Magician, as his children called him, who could make sexual secrets vanish beneath a rich surface life of family and uncommon art . . . intriguing

Employing luxurious prose that quietly evokes the tortured soul behind these literary masterpieces, Tóibín has an unequalled gift for mapping the interior of genius

Literary lovers will want to sink into this absorbing reimagining of the life of the Nobel Prize-winning German writer Thomas Mann . . . Mann family members have their own struggles - with each other and a world where they rarely feel at home - all vividly brought to life

You don't have to be a Thomas Mann fan to be gripped by the account of his life that author Colm Tóibín delivers in his new novel . . . [Tóibín's]  his biggest triumph is in getting to the heart of Mann's dilemma

A celebration of what novels can do

Devastatingly human . . . savage, sordid and hauntingly believable

Tremendous, richly beautiful, wonderful . . . it does everything we ought to ask of a great novel

Tessa Hadley, Guardian, on ‘Nora Webster’

From one of our greatest living writers comes a sweeping novel of unrequited love and exile, war and family. The Magician tells the story of Thomas Mann, whose life was filled with great acclaim and contradiction. He would find himself on the wrong side of history in the First World War, cheerleading the German army, but have a clear vision of the future in the second, anticipating the horrors of Nazism. He would have six children and keep his homosexuality hidden; he was a man forever connected to his family and yet bore witness to the ravages of suicide. He would write some of the greatest works of European literature, and win the Nobel Prize, but would never return to the country that inspired his creativity. Through one life, Colm Tóibín tells the breathtaking story of the twentieth century.

The Fathers of Wilde, Yeats and Joyce

Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know

An intimate study of three of Ireland's greatest writers from one of its best-loved contemporary voices, Colm Tóibín 
__________________ 
 
In Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know Colm Tóibín takes three of Ireland's greatest writers - Oscar Wilde, W.B. Yeats and James Joyce - and examines their earliest influences: their fathers. 
 
With his inimitable wit and sensitivity, Tóibín introduces us to Wilde Senior, the philandering doctor whose libel case prefigured that of his son; the elder Yeats, an impoverished artist who never finished a painting; and to John Stanislaus Joyce, the hard-drinking, storytelling father of James, who couldn't feed his own family. 
 
 This is an illuminating study of how each of these men cast a long shadow not only over the lives of their famous sons, but over the works for which they are celebrated and cherished. 
__________________ 
 
'Astonishing to read. Tóibín has a hawk-like eye for literary subtleties, and a generosity towards his subjects that is warm' Sunday Times 
 
'Funny, exciting, illuminating, wonderful, so engaging. Tells us more than a little about our own selves along the way' Irish Times 
 
'There is something interesting and insightful on almost every page' Observer 
 
'Sparkling, subtle, witty and often deeply moving . . . A classic' Fintan O'Toole, New Statesman 
 
'Scintillating, imaginative, enlightening and powerfully moving throughout' Roy Foster, Spectator

There is something interesting and intriguing to be found on almost every page

Toibin has a hawk-like eye for literary subtleties, and a generosity towards his subjects that is warm and unacademic.

If there is a more brilliant writer than Tóibín working today, I don't know who that would be

Toibin is a supple, subtle thinker, alive to hints and undertones, wary of absolute truths

A consistently revealing look at how writers' relationships have influenced their work

Sunday Telegraph on 'New Ways to Kill Your Mother'

A wide-ranging and enlightening study of the potentially stifling family and the individual spirit of the writer

Sunday Times on 'New Ways to Kill Your Mother'

'A father...is a necessary evil.' Stephen Dedalus in Ulysses 
 
In Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know Colm Tóibín takes three of Ireland's greatest writers - Oscar Wilde, W.B. Yeats and James Joyce - and examines their earliest influences: their fathers. With his inimitable wit and sensitivity, Tóibín introduces us to Wilde Senior, the philandering doctor whose libel case prefigured that of his son; the elder Yeats, an impoverished artist who never finished a painting; and to John Stanislaus Joyce, the hard-drinking, storytelling father of James, who couldn't feed his own family. This is an illuminating study of how each of these men cast a long shadow not only over the lives of their famous sons, but over the works for which they are celebrated and cherished.

Brooklyn

Colm Toibin's Brooklyn is a devastating story of love, loss and one woman's terrible choice between duty and personal freedom. 
 
It is Ireland in the early 1950s and for Eilis Lacey, as for so many young Irish girls, opportunities are scarce. So when her sister arranges for her to emigrate to New York, Eilis knows she must go, leaving behind her family and her home for the first time. 
 
Arriving in a crowded lodging house in Brooklyn, Eilis can only be reminded of what she has sacrificed. She is far from home - and homesick. And just as she takes tentative steps towards friendship, and perhaps something more, Eilis receives news which sends her back to Ireland. There she will be confronted by a terrible dilemma - a devastating choice between duty and one great love. 
 
'With this elating and humane novel, Colm Tóibín has produced a masterwork' Sunday Times 
 
'The most compelling and moving portrait of a young woman I have read in a long time' Zoë Heller Guardian, Books of the Year 
 
'A work of such skill, understatement and sly jewelled merriment could haunt your life' Ali Smith TLS, Books of the Year

With this elating and humane novel, Colm Tóibín has produced a masterwork

The most compelling and moving portrait of a young woman I have read in a long time

A work of such skill, understatement and sly jewelled merriment could haunt your life

Suffused with humane depth, funny, affecting, deftly plotted ... a novel of magnificent accomplishment

Brooklyn moved me more than any other book this year

A beautifully crafted work that transformed ordinary lives into something extraordinary

No book this year gave me greater pleasure

Not a sentence or a thought out of place. It takes over as his finest ficiton to date

Remarkable freshness and immediacy ... with a lovely comedic lightness

A lovely, thoughtful book ... alive with authentic detail, moved along by the ripples of affection and doubt that shape any life: a novel that offers the reader serious pleasure

Full of sly fun, lovely comic observation and an almost tangible pleasure in storytelling

Refreshingly authentic . . . Eilis is so vivid it's difficult to believe she did not actually exist

It is Ireland in the early 1950s and for Eilis Lacey, as for so many young Irish girls, opportunities are scarce. So when her sister arranges for her to emigrate to New York, Eilis knows she must go, leaving behind her family and her home for the first time. 
 
Arriving in a crowded lodging house in Brooklyn, Eilis can only be reminded of what she has sacrificed. She is far from home - and homesick. And just as she takes tentative steps towards friendship, and perhaps something more, Eilis receives news which sends her back to Ireland. There she will be confronted by a terrible dilemma - a devastating choice between duty and one great love.

House of Names

THE TOP 10 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 
 
'Unforgettable' Mary Beard 
 
'They cut her hair before they dragged her to the place of sacrifice. Her mouth was gagged to stop her cursing her father, her cowardly, two-tongued father. Nonetheless, they heard her muffled screams.' 
 
On the day of his daughter's wedding, Agamemnon orders her sacrifice. 
 
His daughter is led to her death, and Agamemnon leads his army into battle, where he is rewarded with glorious victory. 
 
Three years later, he returns home and his murderous action has set the entire family - mother, brother, sister - on a path of intimate violence, as they enter a world of hushed commands and soundless journeys through the palace's dungeons and bedchambers. As his wife seeks his death, his daughter, Electra, is the silent observer to the family's game of innocence while his son, Orestes, is sent into bewildering, frightening exile where survival is far from certain. Out of their desolating loss, Electra and Orestes must find a way to right these wrongs of the past even if it means committing themselves to a terrible, barbarous act. 
 
House of Names is a story of intense longing and shocking betrayal. It is a work of great beauty, and daring, from one of our finest living writers. 
 
'A masterpeice' Daily Telegraph 
'Devastatingly human ... hauntingly believable' Guardian 
'A celebration of what novels can do' Observer

Part of Toibin's success comes down to the power of his writing: an almost unfaultable combination of artful restraint and wonderfully observed detail . . . Unforgettable

A giant amongst storytellers, Toibin has thrown down the gauntlet with his latest novel . . . And it is a masterpiece

A gorgeous stylist, Tóibín captures the subtle flutterings of consciousness better than any writer alive . . . Never before has Tóibín demonstrated such range, not just in tone but in action. He creates the arresting, hushed scenes for which he's so well known just as effectively as he whips up murders that compete, pint for spilled pint, with those immortal Greek playwrights

This is a novel about the way the members of a family keep secrets from one another, tell lies and make mistakes.. .

In a novel describing one of the Western world's oldest legends, in which the gods are conspicuous by their absence, Tóibín achieves a paradoxical richness of characterisation and a humanisation of the mythological, marking House Of Names as the superbly realised work of an author at the top of his game.

A spellbinding adaptation of the Clytemnestra myth, House of Names considers the Mycenaen queen in all her guises: grieving mother, seductress, ruthless leader - and victim of the ultimate betrayal.

A haunting story, largely because Tóibín tells it in spare, resonant prose...

A Greek House of Cards... Just like Heaney at the end of his Mycenae lookout, Toibin's novel augurs an era of renewal that comes directly from the cessation of hostilities.

The book's mastery of pacing and tone affirm the writer as one of our finest at work today.

A daring, and triumphant return, to the Oresteia... bleakly beautiful twilight of the Gods.

The escalation of violence and desire for revenge has deliberate echoes of the Irish Troubles

On the day of his daughter's wedding, Agamemnon orders her sacrifice. 
 
His daughter is led to her death, and Agamemnon leads his army into battle, where he is rewarded with glorious victory. 
 
Three years later, he returns home and his murderous action has set the entire family - mother, brother, sister - on a path of intimate violence, as they enter a world of hushed commands and soundless journeys through the palace's dungeons and bedchambers. As his wife seeks his death, his daughter, Electra, is the silent observer to the family's game of innocence while his son, Orestes, is sent into bewildering, frightening exile where survival is far from certain. Out of their desolating loss, Electra and Orestes must find a way to right these wrongs of the past even if it means committing themselves to a terrible, barbarous act.

Nora Webster

* * * Shortlisted for the 2014 Costa Novel Awards and the 2015 Folio Prize * * * 
 
Nora Webster is the heartbreaking new novel from one of the greatest novelists writing today. 
 
It is the late 1960s in Ireland. Nora Webster is living in a small town, looking after her four children, trying to rebuild her life after the death of her husband. She is fiercely intelligent, at times difficult and impatient, at times kind, but she is trapped by her circumstances, and waiting for any chance which will lift her beyond them. 
 
Slowly, through the gift of music and the power of friendship, she finds a glimmer of hope and a way of starting again. As the dynamic of the family changes, she seems both fiercely self-possessed but also a figure of great moral ambiguity, making her one of the most memorable heroines in contemporary fiction. 
 
The portrait that is painted in the years that follow is harrowing, piercingly insightful, always tender and deeply true. Colm Tóibín's Nora is a character as resonant as Anna Karenina or Madame Bovary and Nora Webster is a novel that illuminates our own lives in a way that is rare in literature. Its humanity and compassion forge an unforgettable reading experience. 
 
'A profoundly gifted world writer' Sebastian Barry

A fine companion piece to his acclaimed novel, Brooklyn . . . Mixing irony and nostalgia in its portrayal of a provincial Irish town. Subtle and enthralling

Tóibín's measured prose and close attention to emotional nuance is shown at its best here

This is his best yet. The ache of a widow's grief is rendered with such an unadorned intensity that you might not think the book could be entertaining too, but it is

A clear-sighted yet sympathetic portrait of a woman destabilised by grief

Tender, delicately oblique in its narration, and exquisitely well-written

A luminous, elliptical novel in which everyday life manages, in moments, to approach the mystical . . . There is much about Nora Webster that we never know. And her very mystery is what makes her regeneration, when it comes, feel universal

Beautiful and heartbreaking. It's so richly detailed and laced with such dialogue that you feel like you are living in Nora's world

Arresting. As this novel movingly proposes, there are no ordinary women and no ordinary lives

The story is so expertly crafted that it achieves a luminous intensity, which lingers long in the memory

This novel deserves to be read as closely as Nora listens to Beethoven. It leaves you with much to ponder . . . Our bond with the Websters makes us imagine they're out there, living and longing, with fire crackling in their hearth

[A] love story and a love letter . . . from one of Ireland's contemporary masters

This very readable novel undercuts the cliches of misery fiction . . . Tóibín's great weapon in this regard is Nora's genuine agency as a character. Both she and the novel which bears her name are defined by what has come before, this is true, both both are more interested in moving forward than being caught in the past

This novel is the real thing, rare and tremendous . . . It does everything we ought to ask of a great novel: that it respond to the fullness of our lives, be as large as life itself

A work of extraordinary achievement. In Nora Webster the slow build-up of pressure, the sense of pain experienced and barely withstood, is cumulatively almost unbearable, and the climax provides a catharsis that raises the hairs on the back of your head. The novel at once takes it place with the very best of Tóibín's fiction

In plain and unsentimental prose, Colm Tóibín has created a character who, in her recently widowed state, must find her way through life for herself and her children. Deftly depicting the self-confined world of Nora and her boys, Tóibín provokes sympathy from the reader, but also unexpected feelings of frustation as Nora dwells on the death of a husband who cushioned her against the realities of life. As haunting as Hedda Gabler, Tóibín's latest offering a triumphant addition to his canon. The relatable voice of Nora Webster will remain with the reader long after the story has ended

Nora Webster is a beautiful and heartbreaking portrayal of one woman's experience of depression and loneliness. But it also evokes the protagonist's struggle to find - and express - her own voice and identity. Quietly perceptive and [a] wonderfully modulated portrayal . . . It's so richly detailed and laced with such dialogue that you feel like you are living in Nora's world. Very moving

Moving, honest and truthful, this is a masterful depiction of the grief process

Tóibín is a master at evoking emotions with particular sensitivity . . . This is a beguiling story that envelops readers like Irish mist. The slow unhurried narrative keeps pace with Nora's grief and changing emotions. By the time she is ready to cut the last ties to her husband, Tóibín has woven the complex threads of family life into a portrait of a much-loved woman

A moving masterpiece. Tóibín really plumbs the heart of his characters

As elegantly and delicately wrought as gossamer . . . What makes Nora Webster so intriguing is the author's complex and nuanced attitudes both to the period and his characters

Once again Colm Tóibín proves he knows women perhaps better than we know ourselves in this quietly devastating portrait of a grieving widow's tortoise-like re-emergence into the world. Tóibín provides a seductive narrative, moments of levity and an entirely honest portrayal of a woman struggling to simply be herself and rebuild her life

If there is a more brilliant writer than Tóibín working today, I don't know who that would be

Nora Webster is recently widowed. Unmoored by her sudden loss and the needs of her children which she now must raise alone, she faces a future that was never meant to be. But within Nora is a strength - a quiet resolve not to succumb to others' expectations and, through the discovery of music and the gift of friendship, she may just find a way to live again. 
 
Featuring one of the most memorable heroines in contemporary fiction, in Nora we find a woman who will be ultimately redefined by her love and her loss.

Colm Tóibín

From the melancholy and amusement within the work of the writer John McGahern to an extraordinary essay on his own cancer diagnosis, Tóibín delineates the bleakness and strangeness of life and also its richness and its complexity. As he reveals the shades of light and dark in a Venice without tourists and the streets of Buenos Aires riddled with disappearances, we find ourselves considering law and religion in Ireland as well as the intricacies of Marilynne Robinson's fiction. 
 
The imprint of the written word on the private self, as Tóibín himself remarks, is extraordinarily powerful. In this collection, that power is gloriously alive, illuminating history and literature, politics and power, family and the self.

Colm Tóibín

A Guest at the Feast

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