Tout bascule pour Eilis le jour où un inconnu frappe à sa porte. Mariée depuis vingt ans à Tony, elle vit le rêve américain des années 1970 à Long Island, où ils élèvent leurs deux enfants. Mais quand elle apprend qu'elle est trompée et qu'une autre femme est enceinte de son mari, ce bonheur patiemment construit vole en éclats. Sans promesse de retour, elle part chez sa mère en Irlande. Rien n'a changé à Enniscorthy, cet univers clos où, de génération en génération, tout se sait sur tout le monde. Même Jim Farrell, qui a repris le pub familial, est tel qu'il était vingt ans auparavant, déchiré entre son sens du devoir et son incapacité à exprimer ses sentiments. Les souvenirs d'un été passé ensemble refluent, tandis que, pour Eilis, les États-Unis et Tony s'éloignent...
Long Island offre des retrouvailles bouleversantes avec Eilis Lacey, l'héroïne du livre culte Brooklyn.
Un roman d'amour déchirant ainsi qu'une merveilleuse variation sur le silence. Le Nouvel Obs.
Colm Tóibín excelle dans les dialogues d'apparence convenue où pèsent les sous-entendus. Lire magazine.
C'est affolant d'émotions. Vous allez être bouleversé par tant de beauté. Elle.
Traduit de l'anglais (Irlande) par Anna Gibson.
Enniscorthy, Irlande, années 1950. Comme de nombreuses jeunes femmes de son âge, Eilis Lacey ne parvient pas à trouver du travail. Par l'entremise d'un prêtre, on lui propose un emploi en Amérique, à Brooklyn. Poussée par sa famille, Eilis s'exile à contre-coeur. D'abord submergée par le mal du pays, elle goûte ensuite, loin du regard de ceux qui la connaissent depuis toujours, une sensation de liberté proche du bonheur. Puis un drame familial l'oblige à retraverser l'Atlantique. Une fois de retour au pays, Brooklyn se voile de l'irréalité des rêves. Eilis ne sait plus à quel monde elle appartient, quel homme elle aime, quelle vie elle souhaite. Elle voudrait ne pas devoir choisir, ne pas devoir trahir.
Un tableau magistral et sensible du Brooklyn des années 1950. Un roman qu'on lit d'une traite, sur l'exil, l'identité, la rupture avec une communauté. Josyane Savigneau, Le Monde des livres.
En 1895, à Londres, Henry James présente sa pièce Guy Domville. C'est un échec retentissant. Blessé, il se réfugie en Irlande. L'histoire racontée ici commence le jour de ce fiasco et explore les cinq années qui ont suivi, vouées à l'art, durant lesquelles James a écrit ses derniers chefs-d'oeuvre. Mais à quel prix ? Le procès d'Oscar Wilde, la mort de sa soeur et, surtout, le suicide de son amie, la romancière Constance Fenimore, lui rappellent avec cruauté l'aridité de sa vie privée et son incapacité à aimer, hormis ses personnages.
Biographie littéraire audacieuse, bouleversant hommage au grand écrivain, Le Maître est aussi un roman qui s'interroge sur les conflits entre création et vie quotidienne.
Colm Tóibin ne prétend pas lever le mystère de James, mais au contraire le suivre, et même l'approuver, dans l'étrange voyage d'une existence vécue pour écrire. Josyane Savigneau, Le Monde des livres.
Prix du meilleur livre étranger l Prix littéraire international IMPAC de Dublin.
Traduit de l'anglais (Irlande) par Anna Gibson.
Un prix Nobel de littérature, un destin familial dramatique et la traversée de toutes les tragédies de la première moitié du siècle dernier : la vie de Thomas Mann, racontée de l'intérieur par Colm Tóibin, se mue en une véritable fresque. Grâce à son épouse, la fascinante Katia Pringsheim, l'écrivain construit patiemment une oeuvre protéiforme et mène une existence en apparence confortable, qui le protège de ses démons. Mais pour ses enfants, il restera à jamais ce chef distant d'une famille où l'on ne sait pas très bien comment s'aimer. Christopher Isherwood, Alma Mahler, Franklin Delano Roosevelt joueront un rôle dans la mue du grand bourgeois conservateur en intellectuel engagé face à la montée du nazisme, qui connaîtra l'épreuve de l'exil. Tóibin évoque ici les élans intimes d'un homme seul en quête d'un bonheur impossible, d'un génie qu'on appelait Le Magicien.
Une longue vie d'écriture, d'engagements politiques et de secrets restitués avec brio. Un tour de force qui laisse entrevoir que « le magicien » n'est pas toujours celui que l'on croit. Olivia Mauriac, Madame Figaro.
Un hommage lucide et passionnant qui éclaire ce paradoxe de la modernité mannienne : opposer toujours l'ambiguïté aux certitudes et aux identités. Nicolas Weill, Le Monde des livres.
Dans une maison du Sud de la France, à la tombée du jour, un homme se souvient. Jeune Américain installé à Paris pour fuir un père autoritaire et ses propres démons, David est fiancé à l'intrépide Hella. Alors que celle-ci séjourne en Espagne, il flâne dans la ville et fréquente le milieu homosexuel parisien, réprimant tant bien que mal ses propres désirs. Un soir, il fait la connaissance de Giovanni, et toutes ses certitudes basculent. C'est dans la minuscule chambre de Giovanni, théâtre de leurs amours et de leurs déchirements, que David fait l'expérience de la tendresse, de l'indécision et de la lâcheté, avançant inéluctablement vers le drame. Publié en 1956, ce roman majeur, chef-d'oeuvre de James Baldwin, explore avec une infinie délicatesse les thèmes du désir, de l'identité, de l'amour et de la trahison.
Préface de Colm Tóibin.
Traduit de l'anglais (États-Unis) par Elisabeth Guinsbourg.
Plongez dans la version originale et intégrale du roman Irlandais qui a bouleversé les coeurs et les codes du roman d'apprentissage.
Avec la collection NOT SO CLASSIC, lire en anglais devient un vrai plaisir grâce à : des notes de vocabulaire en marge (en français et en anglais) un dossier complet pour comprendre l'oeuvre, ses personnages, ses grands thèmes et son contexte des quiz pour mémoriser l'essentiel, de façon ludique des activités pour progresser en anglais, grâce au texte d'un auteur d'exception
An unforgettable story about loss and new love from Colm Tóibín, the bestselling author of Brooklyn and Long Island.
'The most striking example of Tóibín's emotional control . . . [An] eloquent expression of the bond between a mother and a son' - The Guardian
One snowy morning, after arguing with her husband, Miquel's mother walks out from their home high up in the Pyrenees and does not return. With his younger brother stationed far away on military service and his father cast out by the people of the town, Miquel and his father are left to fend for themselves. Together they will be forced to battle the elements, and their resentment of each other, through the long winter.
Miquel's desperate searching for his mother is only interrupted when Manolo, an orphaned servant boy from the next village, arrives to help out in the house. As Miquel is forced to confront the reality of his mother's absence, Manolo, with his silences and longing gaze, offers the promise of new love, and another kind of life.
'A Long Winter evokes loss, loneliness, guilt and survival in a few masterly strokes' - Independent
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.
« Est-ce que Charlotte Stant va nous rendre plus grandioses ? ? Oui, je pense. Parce qu'elle est grandiose. Grandiose par sa nature, par son caractère, par son esprit. Grandiose par sa vie. » Prince romain ruiné, Amerigo espère sauver la réputation familiale grâce à son mariage avec Maggie, héritière du richissime collectionneur d'art Adam Verver. Mais l'union d'Adam avec Charlotte risque de briser cet arrangement. Seule leur confidente, Fanny Assingham, sait qu'Amerigo et Charlotte ont eu une relation aussi passionnée qu'impossible. Elle va observer, impuissante, les tourments de ce quatuor amoureux qui s'enfonce dans le drame avec tout le raffinement et la discrétion dont les gens de leur condition sont capables.
Une réécriture de la tragédie des Atrides.
Après le sacrifice de sa fille, une mère fomente la mise à mort de l'assassin. Enragée, elle crie sa joie de venger son enfant. Puis son fils est enlevé et passe des années en exil où, dans un douloureux monologue intérieur, il revit le meurtre de sa soeur. Au foyer, il ne reste qu'une fille, obsédée jusqu'à la folie par la place démesurée qu'occupent les disparus dans le coeur de leur mère.
Clytemnestre, Oreste, Électre. Ils mêlent leurs voix en un choeur tragique pour raconter ce drame : l'assassinat d'Iphigénie par son père en échange d'une victoire à la guerre.
Dans des paysages sauvages qui rappellent les contrées isolées d'Irlande, Colm Tóibin donne aux héros et aux héroïnes du mythe grec une humanité bouleversante, inattendue, qui nous hante longtemps.
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
Set in Ireland in the 1990s, Colm Tóibín's The Blackwater Lightship tells the story of the Devereux family, and reveals the intense connection between grandmother, mother and daughter.
Helen's beloved brother Declan is dying. Now, she must join her mother and grandmother in a crumbling old house by the sea, three generations calling an uneasy truce after years of strife, to be by his side.
Together with Declan's friends, who know more about him than any family, they must all deal with the past and come to terms with each other.
'It is in his emotional choreography that Tóibín shows himself to be an exceptional writer' - The Sunday Telegraph
'The most astonishing piece of writing, lyrical in its emotion and spare in its construction . . . Tóibín has crafted an unmissable read' - The Sunday Herald
Part of the Picador Collection, a series showcasing the best of modern literature.
Read Long Island, the Sunday Times bestselling sequel to Colm Tóibín's beloved Brooklyn.
Colm Toibin''s Homage to Barcelona celebrates one of Europe''s greatest cities - a cosmopolitan hub of vibrant architecture, art, culture and nightlife. It moves from the story of the city''s founding and its huge expansion in the nineteenth century to the lives of Gaudi, Miro, Picasso, Casals and Dali. It also explores the history of Catalan nationalism, the tragedy of the Civil War, the Franco years and the transition from dictatorship to democracy which Colm Toibin witnessed in the 1970s.
Written with deep knowledge and affection, Homage to Barcelona is a sensuous and beguiling portrait of a unique Mediterranean port and an adopted home.
Nora Webster lives ia small town, looking after her four children, trying to rebuild her life after the death of her husband. She is fiercely intelligent, at times difficult and impatient, at times kind, but she is trapped by her circumstances, and waiting for any chance which will lift her beyond them.
Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize
'A triumph' - The Observer
'A masterly achievement' - The Independent
In January 1895 Henry James anticipates the opening of his first play, Guy Domville, in London. The production fails, and he returns, chastened and humiliated, to his writing desk. The result is a string of masterpieces, but they are produced at a high personal cost.
In The Master Colm Tóibín, author of Brooklyn and Long Island, captures the exquisite anguish of a man who circulated in the grand parlours and palazzos of Europe, who was astonishingly vibrant and alive in his art, and yet whose attempts at intimacy inevitably failed him and those he tried to love. It is a powerful account of the hazards of putting the life of the mind before affairs of the heart.
Part of the Picador Collection, a series showcasing the best of modern literature.
In Love in a Dark Time, Colm Toibin looks at the life and work of some of the greatest and most influential artists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His subjects range from figures such as Oscar Wilde, born in the 1850s, to Pedro Almodovar, born nearly a hundred years later.
Toibin studies how a changing world impacted on the lives of people who, on the whole, kept their homosexuality hidden, and reveals that the laws of desire changed everything for them, both in their private lives and in the spirit of their work.
A modern classic work of Irish literature, this award-winning novel is an exploration of love, art and identity.
This was the night train to Barcelona, some hours before the dawn. This was 1950, late September. I had left my husband. I had left my home.
Katherine Proctor has dared to leave her family in Ireland and reach out for a new life. Determined to become an artist, she flees to Spain, where she meets Miguel, a passionate man who has fought for his own freedoms. They retreat to the quiet intensity of the mountains and begin to build a life together.
But as Miguel's past catches up with him, Katherine too is forced to re-examine her relationships: with her lover, her painting and the homeland she only thought she knew. . .
The South was Colm Tóibín's debut novel, winning the Irish Times First Fiction Award in 1991.
'An imaginative, deeply felt and evocative tale' - The Sunday Times
'Colm Tóibín writes prose of a heartbreaking beauty'- Hilary Mantel
Part of the Picador Collection, a series showcasing the best of modern literature.
Read Long Island, the Sunday Times bestselling sequel to Colm Tóibín's beloved Brooklyn.
Sean Scully est l'un des peintres abstraits les plus reconnus de notre époque. Son style pictural, composé de lignes ou de bandes de couleur faisant allusion à des éléments architecturaux tels que des portails, des fenêtres et des murs, est l'un des plus immédiatement reconnaissables dans la peinture contemporaine. Ce livre en format compact rassemble ses photographies des murs de pierre sèche trouvés sur les îles d'Aran, au large de la côte ouest de l'Irlande.
For Mary, her son has been lost to the world, and now, living in exile and in fear, she tries to piece together the memories of the events that led to her son's brutal death. To her he was a vulnerable figure, surrounded by men who could not be trusted, living in a time of turmoil and change.
A compelling portrait of a beloved poet from one of today's most acclaimed novelists
In this book, novelist Colm Toibin 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, Toibin 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 Toibin.
For Toibin, the secret of Bishop's emotional power is in what she leaves unsaid. Exploring Bishop's famous attention to detail, Toibin describes how Bishop is able to convey great emotion indirectly, through precise descriptions of particular settings, objects, and events. He examines how Bishop's attachment to the Nova Scotia of her childhood, despite her later life in Key West and Brazil, is related to her early loss of her parents-and how this connection finds echoes in Toibin's life as an Irish writer who has lived in Barcelona, New York, and elsewhere.
Beautifully written and skillfully blending biography, literary appreciation, and descriptions of Toibin's travels to Bishop's Nova Scotia, Key West, and Brazil, On Elizabeth Bishop provides a fresh and memorable look at a beloved poet even as it gives us a window into the mind of one of today's most acclaimed novelists.
A new selection of letters, statements, and interviews reveals the preoccupations, thoughts, and ideas of Francis Bacon, one of the twentieth century's most influential and important artists.
The documents selected for Francis Bacon: A Self-Portrait in Words illustrate Bacon's sharp wit and ability to express complex ideas in highly personal, memorable language. Included here are not only letters to friends, patrons, and fellow artists, but also intriguing notes and lists of paintings. They often come with a sketch as an aide-mémoire or an injunction to himself as he worked in the studio, and many have only come to light since his death.
Bacon's letters mirror and reveal his dominant preoccupations at different points throughout his long career. Most of Bacon's letters have never been published and include several that he wrote to author Michael Peppiatt. Particularly intriguing is the record of a dream that he jotted down, outlining impossibly beautiful paintings he had conjured up in his sleep. Together with photographs, archive material, and works by the artist are numerous reproductions of Bacon's characteristic handwriting, from the briefest jottings and notes to more extensive letters and statements.
Bacon frequently came up with memorable epithets and definitions. He delighted in doing with words what he set out to do in painting: "I like phrases that cut me." Peppiatt explores the personal legacy of one of the twentieth century's most important painters and presents a compelling verbal self-portrait that reveals both man and artist.
THE TOP 10 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'Unforgettable' Mary Beard 'They cut her hair before they dragged her to the place of sacrifice. Her mouth was gagged to stop her cursing her father, her cowardly, two-tongued father. Nonetheless, they heard her muffled screams.' On the day of his daughter's wedding, Agamemnon orders her sacrifice. His daughter is led to her death, and Agamemnon leads his army into battle, where he is rewarded with glorious victory. Three years later, he returns home and his murderous action has set the entire family - mother, brother, sister - on a path of intimate violence, as they enter a world of hushed commands and soundless journeys through the palace's dungeons and bedchambers. As his wife seeks his death, his daughter, Electra, is the silent observer to the family's game of innocence while his son, Orestes, is sent into bewildering, frightening exile where survival is far from certain. Out of their desolating loss, Electra and Orestes must find a way to right these wrongs of the past even if it means committing themselves to a terrible, barbarous act. House of Names is a story of intense longing and shocking betrayal. It is a work of great beauty, and daring, from one of our finest living writers. 'A masterpeice' Daily Telegraph 'Devastatingly human ... hauntingly believable' Guardian 'A celebration of what novels can do' Observer
Set in Argentina in a time of great change, The Story of the Night by Colm Tóibín is a powerful and moving novel about sex, death, and a man who, as the Falklands War is fought and lost, finds his own way to emerge into the world.
'Beautiful . . . a thriller, a love story and much more' - Roddy Doyle
'A remarkable achievement . . . [a] sheer pleasure to read' - The Sunday Times
Richard Garay lives alone with his mother in Buenos Aires, hiding his sexuality from her and the world.
Stifled by a job he despises, he finds himself willing to take considerable risks . . .
Part of the Picador Collection, a series showcasing the best of modern literature.
Read Long Island, the bestselling sequel to Colm Tóibín's beloved Brooklyn.
