The First Ghetto: Venice and the Jews by Alexander Lee: Stunning account of a dark history
Tracing the creation of Europe’s first designated urban quarter and the bleak reality for those who lived there
By John Banville
‘My mother found love letters written to my father by another man when pregnant with her fourth child’
The Library of Traumatic Memory by Neil Jordan: Immediately engaging kaleidoscopic read set in 2084
Crime fiction: From a disturbing revenge story to a Romanian detective in an absurd bind
Neil Tully’s The Visit: ‘I wrote the sort of novel I like to read – a small town, a sense of trouble lurking’
Author Djamel White: ‘I didn’t feel like I fit in at school or at home’
A Far-Flung Life by ML Stedman: An epic and intimate family saga
Minor Black Figures: a searingly intelligent critique of contemporary culture
SHORT STORIES
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POETRY
A Rebel and a Traitor by Rory Carroll: Thrilling account of a key figure in Irish history
By Julian Girdham
Rasputin and the Downfall of the Romanovs by Antony Beevor: perhaps a mirror for our troubled times
By Claire Coughlan
Enough Said by Alan Bennett: eclecticism of fourth diaries collection ultimately charms
By Seoirse Swanton
Four Night Seas by Niamh Mac Cabe: A quiet, subtle capturing of cultural identity without resort to cliche
By Lucy Sweeney Byrne
Dolores Keane will forever be the sound of the second time continuity and change coincided in Ireland
By Barry McCrea
Rory O’Connor biography by Gerard Shannon: A rigorous and impeccably balanced portrait
By Andrew Lynch
The Woman in the Water by Henrietta McKervey: Gothic thriller reopens familiar mystery
By Julia Kelly
Fog Bells: A flavour of the depth and richness of the poetry currently being written in Turkish
By Neil P Doherty
Anna Burns: ‘When I got damaged in surgery, nothing else mattered. I’ve always lived in survival mode’
By Martin Doyle
Hotel Exile by Jane Rogoyska: Moving account of ordinary folk caught in second World War
By Pat Carty
Kids, Wait Till You Hear This!: Liza Minnelli sets the record straight in revealing memoir
By Colm McKenna
Seamus Heaney: from ancient Greece to home turf, Northern shades and the Nobel Prize
By Nicholas Allen
