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  • Published: 15 June 2009
  • ISBN: 9780099532453
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 400
  • RRP: $27.99
Categories:

Sweet Liberty

Travels in Irish America




A brilliantly funny exploration of Irish America from the awward-winning writer of Star of the Sea and Redemption Falls.

Joseph O'Connor's love affair with all things American led to an extraordinary tour of the United States to visit the nine different towns called Dublin, as well as some of the great cities and tiny hamlets in between. Along the way he wittily deconstructs the legends of a whole pantheon of Irish American heroes, from John F. Kennedy to Billy the Kid, and takes a quick detour to finally answer that most important question: was Elvis really Irish?

The result is a hilarious, poignant and unforgettable book that celebrates the breathtaking diversity of the Irish influence on America and actually manages to find a town called Dublin, somewhere on the planet, that doesn't have one single pub within its limits...

  • Published: 15 June 2009
  • ISBN: 9780099532453
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 400
  • RRP: $27.99
Categories:

About the author

Joseph O'Connor

Joseph O’Connor was born in Dublin. His books include eight previous novels: Cowboys and Indians (Whitbread Prize shortlist), Desperadoes, The Salesman, Inishowen, Star of the Sea (American Library Association Award, Irish Post Award for Fiction, France’s Prix Millepages, Italy’s Premio Acerbi, Prix Madeleine Zepter for European novel of the year), Redemption Falls, Ghost Light (Dublin One City One Book Novel 2011) and The Thrill of it All. His fiction has been translated into forty languages. He received the 2012 Irish PEN Award for outstanding achievement in literature and in 2014 he was appointed Frank McCourt Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Limerick.

www.josephoconnorauthor.com

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Praise for Sweet Liberty

The laureate of the rising Irish generation, he combines that demotic wit of Roddy Doyle, the social concern of Dermot Bolger and the structural guile of Colm Toibin. A signficant writer of a very contemporary kind

Irish Times

A fabulously droll, unsentimental, and craic-laden report on the haunts of the Gael taking in a wide range of political and historical references along its way. Many of the people the authors meets are so doggedly Irish they make him feel like an Englishman at a Sinn Fein rally, which gives the book a fascinating air of being a report from a doubly foreign land

Glasgow Herald

He has written a book full of laughs and smiles, skillfully basted with well-brewed blarney

New York Times

O'Connor holds up a mirror to the America that we see but don't often notice

San Francisco Chronicle

One is reminded of vintage Bill Bryson...O'Connor is an engaging fellow, an affable kind of chap who could make a cross-continent Greyhound bus ride pass in a jiffy

Scotsman