This original and engaging study explores the way in which Colm Tóibín repeatedly identifies and disrupts the boundaries between personal and political or social histories in his fiction. Through this collapsing of boundaries, he examines the cost of broader political exclusions and considers how personal and political narratives shape individual subjects. Each of Tóibíns novels is comprehensively addressed here, as are his non-fiction works, reviews, plays, short stories, and some as-yet-unpublished work. The book situates Tóibín not only within his contemporary literary milieu, but also within the contexts of the Irish literary tradition, contemporary Irish politics, Irish nationalism, and theories of psychology, gender, nationalism, and postcolonialism.

Kathleen Costello-Sullivan is an Associate Professor of Modern Irish Literature at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, New York, USA, where she founded and directs an Irish Literature minor. She has published widely on Anglo-Irish and Irish authors, including Jonathan Swift, Somerville and Ross, Maria Edgeworth, Emily Lawless, and Colm Tóibín, and her critical edition of Sheridan Le Fanus Carmilla is forthcoming.

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