Carnival Blog RSS

This Autumn, we published the great Irish novel Exiles by Dónall Mac Amhlaigh, translated for the first time into English by Mícheál Ó hAodha. So far, it has been received excellently by readers, academics and reviewers, and is now due to be published in the US in Spring 2021.  Dónall Mac Amhlaigh (1926-1989) was one of the most important Irish-language writers of the 20th century. A native of County Galway, he is best known for his novels and short stories concerning the lives of the more than half-a-million Irish people who left Ireland for post-war Britain. Here's a selection of some of...

Was awoken in the night several times by Edith trying to get up and her alarm going off. The nurses would always come straight away.

Rosa and Susan were on today, and I heard them whispering. ‘They always try and get up at the end…’

Nathan Munday, in Wales Arts Review, reviews "this wonderful collection" of poems, Natalie Ann Holborow's second collection, published by Parthian last month. "Magic, folklore, witchcraft and mystery – perhaps the most important element bottled in poetry – are unashamedly interwoven with the empirical. The speaker is not afraid to question and wonder. The poems are as colourful and complex as those labyrinthine streets that shore the Ganga of her India poems." In conclusion, he writes: "...her collection is – I’ll use the word again – brave and inspiring. This is a poet who taps into the ‘wonder’ of the ‘child’s...

Niall Griffiths, in the latest issue of Planet, out this month, has reviewed three Parthian novels in translation: Hana by Alena Mornštajnová (translated from Czech by Julia and Peter Sherwood), Insomnia by Alberts Bels (translated from Latvian by Jayde Will) and Exiles by Dónall Mac Amhlaigh (translated from Irish by Mícheál Ó hAodha). Describing Hana as "a shattering book", he goes on: "Mornštajnová knows howto highlight the specific details in which the Devil lurks: the pride in the neatness with which yellow stars are stitched to lapels is truly heartbreaking..." Turning to Insomnia, Griffiths dissects the power of the imagination...