The Art of Reading is a monthly book club hosted by Colm Tóibín, the Laureate for Irish Fiction.
Each month, the Laureate meets a different library book club to discuss a book by an Irish writer, highlighting outstanding Irish writing and celebrating the reader and book clubs.
The selected titles celebrate new work by contemporary Irish writers, and the latest episode features Colm in conversation with Mike McCormack about his novel, This Plague of Souls.
In the Irish Times, Martin Doyle writes: ‘Part roman noir, part metaphysical thriller, This Plague of Souls deals with how we might mend the world – and is the story of a man who would let the world go to hell if he could keep his family together.’
Mike McCormack comes from the west of Ireland and is the author of two collections of short stories Getting it in the Head and Forensic Songs, and three novels Crowe’s Requiem, Notes from a Coma and Solar Bones.
In 1996 he was awarded the Rooney Prize for Literature, and Getting it in the Head was chosen as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. In 2006, Notes from a Coma was shortlisted for the Irish Book of the Year Award. In 2016, Solar Bones was awarded the Goldsmiths Prize and the Bord Gais Energy Irish Novel of the Year and Book of the Year; it was also long-listed for the 2017 Man Booker Prize. In 2018, it was awarded the International Dublin Literary Award.
The Art of Reading Book Club is an initiative of the Arts Council and the Laureate for Irish Fiction, in partnership with Libraries Ireland. Find out more here.
