The Irish Male at Home and Abroad is the hilarious sequel to Joe O'Connor's bestseller The Secret World of the Irish Male. From flirting lessons in downtown Manhattan to being offered a good ride in Disneyland by the now legendary Wanda, it was a long, strange and hilarious trip. Now, in The Irish Male at Home and Abroad, O'Connor returns faster, funnier and filthier than ever before. Impersonating Santa Claus in a busy Dublin store on Christmas Eve, spending a penny in Lord Jeffrey Archer's penthouse loo, traipsing the local-radio publicity circuit in 100-degree Australian heat, on the run in revolutionary Nicaragua, contemplating the Shroud of Turin, or making a deposit in a grotty sperm bank - here are tall tales and short stories: absurd, anarchic and unforgettably side-splitting adventures from home and abroad. Laugh-out-loud funny, yet always affectionate and sometimes poignant, O'Connor roams through an Ireland of wife-swapping sodomites and late-night sodalities, when not getting lost in the restless new Europe of beach holidays, terrible beauties and Baywatch lookalikes. It's going to be another weird and uproarious trip. But like Wanda once said: Hitch a ride, sweetheart, and hang on real tight!

The author of Desperadoes and Cowboys and Indians directs his acid humour upon contemporary Irish life at home and abroad. The result is a headlong, love-struck, end-of-millenium, coast-to-coast tour of the frustrations, contraditions and giddying glories of being Irish in the 1990s.

A selection of the best from the author's hilarious take on the world of the Irish male. From love, rock 'n' roll and football, to trivial matters such as the search for international peace and the craving for philosophical enlightenment, it features snapshots that presents a hilarious portrait of contemporary Irish life, both at home and abroad.

O'Connor shares his insights into an array of universal topics, such as: Interpersonal Communication: On successful chat-up lines; Electronics: The Irish Male Rides Into Cyberspace [On Net Sex]; Literature: There's One Yawn Every Minute [On book awards]; Women's Studies: The Irish Male -- A User's Manual; International Book Fairs: Fondling Foreigners in Frankfurt; Nutritional Science: Tongue-Fu for Beginners - Food and Sex; Comparative Studies: Is Football Actually Better Than Sex?; British Geography: The Beautiful Norf [Exploring Finsbury] So join the Irish Male's on his final heart-stopping ride towards the dawn of the new cyberia. Because God knows -- he needs your company.

One of the Guardian's 100 Best Books of the 21st Century "With language so vibrant it practically has a pulse, Enright makes an exquisitely drawn case for the possibility of growth, love and transformation at any age." —People From internationally acclaimed author Anne Enright comes a shattering novel set in a small town on Ireland's Atlantic coast. The Green Road is a tale of family and fracture, compassion and selfishness—a book about the gaps in the human heart and how we strive to fill them. Spanning thirty years, The Green Road tells the story of Rosaleen, matriarch of the Madigans, a family on the cusp of either coming together or falling irreparably apart. As they grow up, Rosaleen's four children leave the west of Ireland for lives they could have never imagined in Dublin, New York, and Mali, West Africa. In her early old age their difficult, wonderful mother announces that she’s decided to sell the house and divide the proceeds. Her adult children come back for a last Christmas, with the feeling that their childhoods are being erased, their personal history bought and sold. A profoundly moving work about a family's desperate attempt to recover the relationships they've lost and forge the ones they never had, The Green Road is Enright's most mature, accomplished, and unforgettable novel to date.

This book presents a series of essays on some of the most challenging issues which are facing Irish Studies scholars in the twenty-first century. It aims to provide a variety of views on topics such as gender, media, the North and the revision of traditional approaches to Irish studies as seen by a number of scholars at the end of the first decade of the third millennium. The breadth of scope is justified by the dynamic growth of the field over the last decade and points to the diverse academic and national backgrounds of the authors of the chapters and the enthusiasm with which the cultural concerns of the island of Ireland are tackled in other countries. Writers from Austria, Brazil, Canada, Germany and Spain provide original viewpoints on Irish topics which are as bold as they are refreshing. The awareness of the unique situation of Ireland and her cultural practices has provided a scenario in which interest in the literature, art, film and other cultural manifestations is great, and it is hoped that this volume will play a part in stimulating debate about some of the fascinating areas of Irish cultural matters discussed herein and will provide a useful work of reference for anyone interested in the rich and ample field of Irish Studies.