Literary Fiction
Novels
The year 2002 is going to be an exciting one for Irish fiction. Blβnaid McKinney, whose collection of stories was so lauded, has a long-awaited first novel forthcoming called The Ledge (Weidenfeld & Nicolson). About the kidnapping of a film critic with his own TV slot and a cult following, its plot is described by Roddy Doyle as coming "staggering out of that corner where malice, hilarity and sentiment meet and have it out".
Limerick-born Michael Collins, who shot to prominence when shortlisted for the Booker Prize and who is on the current longlist for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, has a new novel The Resurrectionists (Weidenfeld & Nicolson). Collins, who now divides his time between Seattle and London, has at the centre of his new murder- and menace-filled book the character of Frank, whose parents burned to death when he was five.
Another Irish writer on the longlist for IMPAC 2002 - the shortlist of six will be announced in March - is John Banville, whose next novel Shroud (Picador) will also be out next year.
Love and Sleep (Faber and Faber) is Seβn O'Reilly's first novel, following his collection of short stories. Back in Derry after wandering Europe, it's the story of Niall, a young man bent on testing the limits of those around him, all the time pushing his own self closer to destruction.
Snow may be cold but has been a hot theme in literary fiction in recent years and The Big Snow (Bloomsbury) is David Park's new novel, also set in Northern Ireland; the year is 1963.
She may be mainly based outside Ireland these days, but it is still central to Edna O'Brien's fiction. In the Forest (Weidenfeld & Nicolson), her new novel, is based on the east-Clare triple murders of Imelda Riney, her small son Liam and Father Joe Walsh, and is sure to spark off again that old debate about the borderline between fact and fiction - and the responsibilities of writers who tread it.
Sebastian Barry goes back to Wicklow 50 years ago, when two children are left with their great-aunt for a summer in Annie Dunne (Faber and Faber).
Eugene McEldowney's sequel to his last novel is Stella's Story (New Island) about how a woman's life can be irrevocably changed by a youthful mistake. To My Daughter in France (Harvill) is a first novel, jointly written by Irish sisters Stephanie and Barbara Keating, and set in Paris and Connemara. Damien Owens's second novel is Peter and Mary Have a Row (Flame).
A daughter withdraws from the world and refuses to communicate with family or society in Carol Shields's new novel Unless (Fourth Estate). Ghosts populate Sue Miller's novel about a San Francisco woman at a crisis in her life in The World Below (Bloomsbury). Sri Lanka inspires haunting dreamlike prose: Romesh Gunesekera's third novel Heaven's Edge (Bloomsbury), is set there, in his homeland. William Boyd's eighth novel is Any Human Heart (Hamish Hamiliton).
W.G. Sebald died in a car crash in Norfolk recently and, thus, appallingly, we have to describe him as the late W.G. Sebald .
As the British Poet Laureat Andrew Motion - also Sebald's colleague at the University of East Anglia - said, his death at 57 seemed particularly unfair as he was only just getting the recognition he deserved. After Nature (Hamish Hamiliton) is a 100-page prose poem which was originally published in 1988, and is now translated by Michael Hamburger.
Also planned for publication in 2002 is Air, War and Literature, lectures delivered in Germany on the Allied fire-bombing of German cities during the war, which caused protests from German readers not keen to hear about German responsibility for the devastation of European cities at that time.
Andrea Barrett, one of the few contemporary novelists to have written about science, looks at mapping the Himalayas in Servants of the Map (Flamingo).
William Gibson's Pattern Recognition (Viking) examines London and a quest for the perfect advertising logos. Alan Warner's novel The Man Who Walks (Jonathan Cape) starts with a spot-on contemporary scenario, the theft of a pub's World Cup kitty. Irvine Welsh is back in trademark form in Porno (Jonathan Cape). Rohinton Mistry sets Family Matters (Faber and Faber) in modern-day Mumbai. Christopher Hope's new novel is Heaven Forbid (Macmillan).
The small jewel of the novella is rarely seen now; Claire Messud has written two in The Hunters (Picador). Tim Winton sets his new novel Dirt Music (Picador) in the isolated landscape of Western Australia. Michael Frayn's new novel, set in London during the second World War, is Spies (Faber and Faber).
The Feast of the Goat (Faber and Faber) is Mario Vargas Llosa's meditation on power and violence in the lives of oppressors and victims in the Dominican Republic. A new novel by J.M.Coetzee is at this stage a major literary event. In his forthcoming work Youth (Secker & Warburg), he goes back half a century, to South Africa and then London.
Literary Fiction
Short Stories
It is always good to see that the short story is alive and kicking. Next year there will be Joyce Carol Oates examining the potential for good and evil in her collection, Faithless, Tales of Transgression (Fourth Estate).
Bernhard Schlink's collection of stories, Flights of Love (Weidenfeld & Nicolson), are all about that elusive magic - love. Molly McCloskey's new collection is The Beautiful Changes (Lilliput).
Novelist Jackie Kay has her first collection of stories. It is called Why Don't You Stop Talking? (Picador), while Amit Chaudhuri combines stories and a memoir in Real Time (Picador).
Coga∅ by Daith∅ Muir∅, a collection of short stories, is also due next year. (Cl≤ Iar-Chonnachta).
Poetry
Czeslaw Milosz's New and Collected Poems 1931-2001 (Allen Lane) will be a definitive book from the Nobel prize-winning poet. Two Forward prize-winners for Best First Collections publish new collections: The Ice Age (Picador) by Paul Farley, and Robin Robertson's Slow Air (Picador). One of the original Beat Poets, Roger McGough's new book is called Everyday Eclipses (Viking). Tom Paulin's The Invasion Handbook (Faber and Faber) is the first part of a planned long poem about the second World War. The Collected Poems of Pearse Hutchinson and his Translation; Done Into English will both be out next year (Gallery). Vona Groarke's third collection is Flight (Gallery). Gerard Smyth's Daytime Sleeper is a new and selected collection from Dedalus, which also has a new collection by John Ennis, Near St Mullin's. Ruth Padel's weekly examination of a poem in the Independent on Sunday have been collected into 52 Ways of Looking at a Poem (Chatto & Windus). Katie Donovan's third collection is Day of the Dead (Bloodaxe).
History
Though it's unfair to make too many claims for a book before it arrives, given the power of Anthony Beevor's Stalingrad - which sold nearly half a million copies - it is inevitable that his latest, Berlin: the Downfall 1945 (Viking) is eagerly awaited as a potential book of the year. Due in April, it will tell the story of the millions caught up in the nightmarish scenario of the Third Reich's final defeat with its background of mass rape, murder, destruction and pillage. That key period is also the focus of Robert Gildea's study of France in Marianne in Chains: In Search of the German Occupation 1940-1945 (Macmillan). As it is in Richard Weight's Patriots: British National Indentity 1945-2000 (Macmillan). Tom Hayden looks at the Irish on the Inside: In Search of the Soul of Irish America (Verso). Hayden, whose parents erased his Irish heritage in a quest for respectability, explores in this book - due in January - the losses wrought by such conformism. Marsh's librarian Muriel McCarthy writes the history of this atmospheric place, where you used to be locked in to read the books in Archbishop Marsh's Library (Four Courts).
Reportage
It's not only the mountains which have claimed lives in the beautiful kingdom of Nepal. Jonathan Gregson's Blood Against the Snows, The Doomed Royal Dynasty of Nepal (Fourth Estate) focuses on that ill-fated family. Boston Globe war journalist Elizabeth Neuffer writes about war crimes prosecution in The Key to My Neighbour's House, Seeking Justice in Bosnia and Rwanda (Bloomsbury). Pulitzer-winning journalist David Halberstam focuses on the US power struggle after the Cold War, in War in a Time of Peace: Bush, Clinton and the Generals (Bloomsbury). Counterpunch: the Journalism that Rediscovers America, by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair (Verso), editors of the Counterpunch political newsletter, examines US politics in the last decade. Village Voice journalist Richard Goldstein grabs the entire gay community - who, like any community, do not always get on with each other - by the scruff of its neck and comes up with uneasy questions in Attack Queers: Liberal Media and the Gay Right (Verso). Philip Gourevitch, the New Yorker writer who made his name internationally with his book on the horrors of Rwanda, is back with a book piecing together in his inimitable forensic style, the story of a notorious New York unsolved murder in A Cold Case (Picador).
Travel
The Snow Geese (Picador) is William Fiennes's first book about following those stern birds to their wintering grounds and about travel and homecoming. Peter Matthiessen is also writing about birds and his search for cranes across the world in The Birds of Heaven: Travels With Cranes (Harvill). No, not a travel book to Israel: Decca Aitkenhead's The Promised Land, Travels in Search of the Perfect E, takes her on an exploration of the international club scene in search of transcendence (Fourth Estate).
Current Affairs
Tariq Ali should be a thoughtful commentator on the fallout of September 11th in The Clash of Fundamentalists: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity (Verso). Contours of Descent: The Economic Consequences of Clinton, Bush, and Greenspan (Verso) is economist Robert Pollin's theories of how the US was sliding into recession long before September. Pariah: Misfortunes of the British Kingdom (Verso) is the provocative title of Tom Nairn's examination of Britain in the era of Tony Blair's New Labour. Philosopher Etienne Balibar looks at European racism and the idea of borders in Politics and the Other Scene (Verso).
World aid is, sadly, more in the news than ever. Tony Farmar has written Believing in Action: A History of Concern 1968-2000 (A&A Farmar). Irish academics focus on our recent ups and even more recent downs in Reinventing Ireland: Culture and the Celtic Tiger (Pluto), edited by Peadar Kirby, Luke Gibbons and Michael Cronin. With a Little Help From My Friend: Planning Corruption in Ireland (Gill and Macmillan) is the wry title of Irish Times journalist Paul Cullen's look at the Flood Tribunal, which he has covered extensively.
Continued on page opposite with Essays and Literary Criticism