The small island has produced Nobel laureates and Booker winners and hosts a booming writing and publishing scene. What’s the secret to its success?
‘The Irish just chat about everything. We love telling tales and yarning. There’s no other country where you could talk for an hour about the weather,” says Aisling Cunningham, 57, the owner of Ulysses Rare Books on Duke Street in Dublin.
Sure enough, I have been here for 50 minutes and we have talked at length about everything from the biblical rains of Donegal to why more people who stop into her antiquarian bookshop end up leaving with a copy of James Joyce’s Dubliners than Ulysses itself. (Cunningham reckons it’s because the former is more accessible – although there is also the small matter of the Shakespeare and Company first edition of the latter costing just short of €30,000, about £25,500.)
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Source link : https://www.theguardian.com/books/article/2024/aug/20/we-all-read-like-hell-how-ireland-became-the-worlds-literary-powerhouse
Author : Kate McCusker
Publish date : 2024-08-20 09:00:17
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