Nov 05 2008
British and Irish Literature
Globe Corner Bookstore’s Shortlist of British and Irish Literature
This list is a wide range of fiction and nonfiction titles by authors who are British or Irish or are simply fascinated with all things British and Irish. From The Kingdom by the Sea to Trainspotting to Dubliners, the list is quite varied and could be a great start for aspiring Anglofiles and Guinnessophiles.
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The Anglo Files: A Field Guide to the British
by Sarah Lyall
Sarah Lyall, a reporter for The New York Times, moved to London in the mid-1990s. She came to terms with its eccentric inhabitants (the English husband who never turned on the lights, the legislators who behaved like drunken frat boys, the hedgehog lovers, the people who extracted their own teeth), and found she had a ringside seat at a singular transitional era in British life.
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The Kingdom by the Sea: A Journey Around the Coast of Great Britain
by Paul Theroux
After eleven years as an American living in London, the renowned travel writer Paul Theroux set out to travel clockwise around the coast of Great Britain to find out what the British were really like. The result is this perceptive, hilarious record of the journey.
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Notes from a Small Island
by Bill Bryson
After nearly 20 treasured years in Britain, the author decided it was time to return to the United States. His last trip around the green and kindly isle resulted in a hilarious travelogue which coveys the glorious eccentricity of Britain.
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Londonstani
by Gautam Malkani
Hailed as one of the most surprising British novels in recent years, Gautam Malkanias electrifying debut reveals young South Asians struggling to distinguish themselves from their parents’ generation in the vast urban sprawl that is contemporary London.
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The Riddle of the Sands
by Erskine Childers
On a sailing trip in the Baltic Sea, two adventurers-become-spies discover a secret German plot to invade England. Written as a wake-up call to the British government, and praised as much for its nautical action as for its suspenseful spycraft, Childers’ 1903 novel is an indisputable espionage classic.
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The Crofter and the Laird
by John McPhee
When John McPhee returned to the island of his ancestors–Colonsay, twenty-five miles west of the Scottish mainland–a hundred and thirty-eight people were living there. About eighty of these, crofters and farmers, had familial histories of unbroken residence on the island for two- or three-hundred years.
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Young Irelanders
by Gerard Donovan
The stories in Young Irelanders shine a fresh light on the New Ireland and how the Irish are coping with its rewards and pressures: immigration, mid-life crisis, adultery and divorce, a lost sense of place and history, and of course, what to do with all that prosperity.
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Trainspotting
by Irvine Welsh
An authentic, unrelenting, and strangely exhilarating group portrait of blasted lives in Edinburgh that has the linguistic energy of A Clockwork Orange and the literary impact of Last Exit to Brooklyn. Rents, Sick Boy, and the others are as unforgettable a clutch of rude boys, junkies, and nutters as readers will ever encounter.
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Round Ireland with a Fridge
by Tony Hawks
A drunken bet led Tony Hawks to hitch-hike around the circumference of Ireland over one month–with a refrigerator in tow–which became what he calls the best experience of his life. Hawks shares his remarkable adventure that was emotional, inspirational, and downright silly at times.
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McCarthy’s Bar: A Journey of Discovery in Ireland
by Pete McCarthy
In this amusing and affectionate homage to Ireland, McCarthy recounts his rollicking adventures around the Emerald Isle in search of his Irish roots.
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Dubliners
by James Joyce
Joyce’s aim was to tell the truth: to create a work of art that would reflect life in Ireland at the turn of the last century and by rejecting euphemism, to reveal to the Irish their unromantic reality, which would lead to the spiritual liberation of the country.
