Colm Tóibín Knihy

„Túto knihu si budete pamätať celý život.“ Ali Smith o knihe Brooklyn Eilis Laceyová vyrastala v malom írskom mestečku, v ťažkých rokoch po druhej svetovej vojne. Keď jej otec Flood z farnosti v Brooklyne ponúkne možnosť odísť do Spojených štátov, Eilis sa rozhodne vycestovať, a tak sa stane jednou z mnohých írskych emigrantov v USA. V Brooklyne si dokončí účtovnícku kvalifikáciu, nájde si prácu v obchodnom dome Bartocci´s, a keď to Eilis najmenej čaká, aj lásku. Nové „americké“ Írsko je však iné ako to pravé doma, medziľudským vzťahom chýba niečo osobné, prirodzené a nezištné. Zemepisná vzdialenosť, čo delí Eilis od jej najbližších v rodnej zemi, je neporovnateľne menšia než úmyselne zatajené rodinné tajomstvá. Postava Eilis Laceyovej je jedna z nezabudnuteľných literárnych hrdiniek súčasnej írskej tvorby a Colm Tóibín dôkladný, trpezlivý rybár, čo vyťahuje na hladinu hlboko ponorené, starostlivo ukryté city.

Deväť krátkych próz ovplyvnených autorovými zážitkami a spomienkami z čias detstva a mladosti v Írsku, z obdobia prežitého v Barcelone, ako aj pôsobenia v USA. Vynikajúco napísané príbehy – štýlom veľmi úsporným i poetickým – s nehou a neobyčajnou citlivosťou vyrozprávané podvedomé, skryté túžby ľudí, ktorí sa často nechtiac ocitli v cudzom, ďalekom svete.

Príbeh nám rozpráva Mária. Matka, ktorej vzali syna – syna, o ktorého prišiel aj svet. Žena, ktorá teraz žije v exile a strážia ju tí, čo sa usilujú zachovať posvätnosť pamiatky jej syna. Ale pravdivosť Máriiných spomienok na jeho zložitý život a tragickú smrť uznávajú len nemnohí z tých, čo jej syna poznali. A keď vôkol nej vyrastajú mýty ako múry, Mária sa upína na pravdu a v období chaosu a hlbokých zmien odhaľuje vlastnú krehkú ľudskosť. Jej zrakom otvára Colm Tóibín celkom nový pohľad na kresťanstvo a vytvára neuveriteľne ľudský portrét Márie, ktorá sa pre mnohých stala ikonou.

THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLER WINNER OF THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE 2022 From one of our greatest living writers comes a sweeping novel of unrequited love and exile, war and family. The Magician tells the story of Thomas Mann, whose life was filled with great acclaim and contradiction. He would find himself on the wrong side of history in the First World War, cheerleading the German army, but have a clear vision of the future in the second, anticipating the horrors of Nazism. He would have six children and keep his homosexuality hidden; he was a man forever connected to his family and yet bore witness to the ravages of suicide. He would write some of the greatest works of European literature, and win the Nobel Prize, but would never return to the country that inspired his creativity. Through one life, Colm Tóibín tells the breathtaking story of the twentieth century. ___________________________________ 'As with everything Colm Tóibín sets his masterful hand to, The Magician is a great imaginative achievement -- immensely readable, erudite, worldly and knowing, and fully realized' - Richard Ford 'No living novelist dramatizes artistic creation as profoundly, as luminously, as Colm Tóibín . . . reading him is among the deepest pleasures our literature can offer' - Garth Greenwell 'This is not just a whole life in a novel, it's a whole world' - Katharina Volckmer

“Colm Tóibín’s beautiful, subtle illumination of Henry James’s inner life” (The New York Times) captures the loneliness and hope of a master of psychological subtlety whose forays into intimacy inevitably fail those he tried to love. Beautiful and profoundly moving, The Master tells the story of Henry James, a man born into one of America’s first intellectual families who leaves his country in the late nineteenth century to live in Paris, Rome, Venice, and London among privileged artists and writers. With stunningly resonant prose, “The Master is unquestionably the work of a first-rate novelist: artful, moving, and very beautiful” (The New York Times Book Review). The emotional intensity of this portrait is riveting.

Novelist and critic Colm Tóibín provides “a fascinating exploration of writers and their families” ( Entertainment Weekly ) and “an excellent guide through the dark terrain of unconscious desires” ( The Evening Standard ) in this brilliant collection of essays that explore the relationships of writers to their families and their work.Colm Tóibín—celebrated both for his award-winning fiction and his provocative book reviews and essays—traces the intriguing, often twisted family ties of writers in the books they leave behind.Through the relationship between W. B. Yeats and his father, Thomas Mann and his children, Jane Austen and her aunts, and Tennessee Williams and his sister, Tóibín examines a world of relations, richly comic or savage in their implications. Acutely perceptive and imbued with rare tenderness and wit, New Ways to Kill Your Mother is a fascinating look at writers’ most influential bonds and a secret key to understanding and enjoying their work.

The bestselling and award-winning author of Brooklyn, Colm Tóibín, returns with a stunning collection of stories—“a book that’s both a perfect introduction to Tóibín and, for longtime fans, a bracing pleasure” (The Seattle Times). Critics praised Brooklyn as a “beautifully rendered portrait of Brooklyn and provincial Ireland in the 1950s.” In The Empty Family, Tóibín has extended his imagination further, offering an incredible range of periods and characters—people linked by love, loneliness, desire—“the unvarying dilemmas of the human heart” ( The Observer, UK). In the breathtaking long story “The Street,” Tóibín imagines a relationship between Pakistani workers in Barcelona—a taboo affair in a community ruled by obedience and silence. In “Two Women,” an eminent and taciturn Irish set designer takes a job in her homeland and must confront emotions she has long repressed. “Silence” is a brilliant historical set piece about Lady Gregory, who tells the writer Henry James a confessional story at a dinner party. The Empty Family will further cement Tóibín’s status as “his generation’s most gifted writer of love’s complicated, contradictory power” ( Los Angeles Times ).

From one of the most important American novelists of the twentieth century—a novel of sexual, racial, political, artistic passions, set in Greenwich Village, Harlem, and France.Stunning for its emotional intensity and haunting sensuality, this book depicts men and women, blacks and whites, stripped of their masks of gender and race by love and hatred at the most elemental and sublime.

Toibin's remarkable insights provide scholars, students, and general readers a fresh encounter with James's well-known texts.

"In this book, novelist Colm Tóibín offers a deeply personal introduction to the work and life of one of his most important literary influences--the American poet Elizabeth Bishop. Ranging across her poetry, prose, letters, and biography, Tóibín creates a vivid picture of Bishop while also revealing how her work has helped shape his sensibility as a novelist and how her experiences of loss and exile resonate with his own. What emerges is a compelling double portrait that will intrigue readers interested in both Bishop and Tóibín"--