This volume is a collaborative reassessment of the writing of John McGahern. The contributors provide provocative readings of his major works and also examine some of his lesser-known short stories, essays and unpublished archival materials which have not yet received due critical attention. The book also has a focus on topics and issues in McGahern’s writing that have been overlooked, thus extending the critical discourse on this important Irish author. The contributors to the volume range from emerging voices in Irish literary criticism to established scholars in comparative and postcolonial literature. They share an innovative approach to McGahern’s writings, challenging conventional readings of his fiction.

Raymond Mullen is a tutor and part-time lecturer in the School of English at Queen’s University Belfast, where he completed a doctorate on the influence of Camus and Proust on John McGahern’s fiction. Adam Bargroff holds a PhD from Queen’s University Belfast. He has forthcoming publications in English Language Notes and as a contributor to the edited volume Masculinity in Crisis. Jennifer Mullen is a lecturer in French at the University of Ulster. Her monograph Remembering the (Post)Colonial Self: Memory and Identity in the Novels of Assia Djebar was published in 2008.