CAROLINE WALSHhas a look at some of the events in the literary world
There will be blood
Dracula will be hard to avoid in Dublin next month as Bram Stoker’s classic novel is feted throughout the city in myriad events as part of Dublin: One City One Book 2009, run in association with a number of bodies including – believe it or not – the Irish Blood Transfusion Service.
Things kick off on Thursday at 6pm with the re-enactment, in St Ann’s Church, Dawson Street, of Stoker’s marriage in 1878 to Florence Balcombe, who’d been the beloved of Oscar Wilde. Admission is free and the event is repeated next Saturday, April 4th, at 2pm.
On the same Saturday, from 9.30am to 12.30pm, Draculas Irish and literary heritage is the subject of a seminar at Dublin City Library and Archive, 138-144 Pearse Street. Douglas Appleyard will talk about The Family Stoker: What Shaped Bram, while in a lecture called Dracula's Ancestry: Some Black Letter Forebears,Dr Albert Power, founder member of the Bram Stoker Society, will look at the influence on Stoker's novel of the vampire tradition, the gothic tradition and the mystery tradition in literature. John Moore will look at Dracula: the Early Translations, examining how translations played a part in making the novel known in different countries and cultures in the years after publication of the original English-language edition. Moore started putting together what is now one of the largest collections of works by, and relating to, Stoker 30 years ago. In a recently published updated Stoker bibliography by Richard Dalby and William Hughes, Moore is acknowledged as "the paramount Stoker collector". He will be bringing along some of these books to this event. Noel Dobbs, Stoker's great-grandson, will also be there. Admission is free, but booking is essential
(tel: 01- 6744873; e-mail: dublinpubliclibraries @dublincity.ie).
Also on Saturday, April 4th, 11th, 18th and 25th, at 12 noon, Dracula will read from Dracula in the Temple Bar Book Market, Temple Bar Square.
On Sunday, April 5th, at 6pm, Pat Liddy will lead a guided tour around Bram Stoker’s Dublin. Admission to the two-hour tour is free (meet at the statue of Wolfe Tone, St Stephen’s Green, opposite the Shelbourne Hotel).
On the same day, at 8.30pm in Meeting House Square, Temple Bar, there’s an outdoor showing of Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 film, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, starring Gary Oldman, Winona Ryder and Anthony Hopkins. Admission is free, but bring a coat, advise the organisers.
There is also a Gothic Film Weekend from April 17th to 19th at the Irish Film Institute on Eustace Street. It includes showings of Nosferatu, a silent film adapted from Dracula, now with a new score; Twilight, based on the vampire romance novel by Stephanie Meyer; and Dracula, starring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing .
Other events include outings for children, lectures in city and suburban libraries, and a short story competition.
The full programme is at www.dublinonecityonebook.ie.
See also Arts, W9, and book review, W11.
The Trinity Booker
The Man Booker Prize ceremony may be indelibly associated with London’s Guildhall, but its Man Booker International Prize event moves around – and this year it’s coming to Dublin. In 2005 the prize was awarded to Ismail Kadare in Edinburgh. In 2007 it went to Chinua Achebe in Oxford. This year, on June 25th, the selected writer will be honoured at a black-tie gathering in Trinity College Dublin, beginning with a champagne reception in the Long Room. The presentation of the prize will be followed by a dinner.
All we have to do now is wait to see who wins.