Colm Tóibín

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A Guest at the Feast

Abridged Edition

Penguin Readers Level 5: Brooklyn (ELT Graded Reader)

Winner of the Rathbones Folio Prize

The Magician

Brooklyn

House of Names

Death in Spring

Nora Webster

The Testament of Mary

Writers and Their Families

New Ways to Kill Your Mother

De Profundis and Other Prison Writings

A Memoir

Persuasion (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

Stories

The Empty Family

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Another Country

Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know

Discover the Penguin books that shaped us

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'

The Fathers of Wilde, Yeats and Joyce

'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.

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

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.

Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know

The Fathers of Wilde, Yeats and Joyce

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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.

Full of insight and intrigue

Searching, funny, generous

Subtle, witty and often deeply moving

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

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

About Colm Tóibín

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