Colm Tóibín ( , ; born 30 May 1955) is an Irish novelist, short story writer, essayist, journalist, critic, playwright and poet. He has won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction, the International Dublin Literary Award, the Hawthornden Prize, the David Cohen Prize and the Folio Prize, amongst other awards.
Books Novels
. Fictional biography of Henry James A Long Winter (2006)
. Fictional biography of Thomas Mann ; Scribner, 2024,
Short story collections
Poetry collections
Non-fiction
(revised edition Picador, 2002, )
(First English edition; Australian edition published 2001)
Collaborative (republished in 1994 without photographs as Bad Blood).
The Irish Famine. A Documentary. With Diarmaid Ferriter, Profile Books Limited, 2001.
As editor
Plays Beauty in a Broken Place (staged in Dublin in 2004)
Screenwriting Return to Montauk (2017)
Articles Asked in 2021 how many articles he had written, Tóibín was uncertain: "I suppose thousands might be accurate", he told The New Yorker.
Literary book reviews YearReview articleWork(s) reviewed19931994199419951996; ; 20002003200420062006200720082008; 2008200820092009; 200920092010; ; 2011; 201120122012201220132014; 20142015; ; ; 201520172017; 2018201820182020; 202120212021202220232023
Introductions YearArticleSubjectNotes2024Paul DurcanThis is the introduction to 80 at 80, a selection of the poet's works, which was edited by Niall MacMonagle and published on 16 October 2024, to coincide with Durcan's 80th birthday.
Himself, on his own work YearArticleSubjectNotes2012Himself and his family; his novel The Heather BlazingWith discursions onto W. B. Yeats; V. S. Naipaul; Jorge Luis Borges; George Moore; James Joyce; John Millington Synge; Henry James; the Mann family; James Baldwin; Samuel Beckett2012His novel The Testament of MaryOn Mary, mother of Jesus2013His novel The South2014His novel Nora WebsterWith discursions onto Mary Lavin's short stories; Hamlet; Anne Carson, Euripides, Sophocles and Fiona Shaw; C. S. Lewis, Julian Barnes and Joyce Carol Oates; Joan Didion and Francisco Goldman; Nadine Gordimer and Juan Goytisolo
Other articles on literature YearArticleSubjectNotes1994Graham GreeneAuctioning his letters20012001James BaldwinAlso covers Martin Luther King, the civil rights movement and William Styron2006Henry James2006Samuel BeckettIncluding his attendance at a lecture by Carl Jung2007Samuel BeckettHis Irish actors2007Henry James (and George Eliot)2008Henry James2008James Baldwin2009Gerard Manley Hopkins2011(in the 19th-century novel)2012DublinersPublished the day before Bloomsday, in a month when James Joyce's short story collection was resissued2012Brian Friel2013Marcel Proust2013Seamus HeaneyHis generosity; Dennis O'Driscoll; Peter Brook; the change in Heaney's work after his eighth collection Seeing Things (1991)2014The Hour of the StarIn the month that this, with other Clarice Lipsector titles, was reissued2015Don Quixote2015The AmbassadorsThe effects this Henry James novel had on Tóibín2016A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man29 December 2016 was the centenary of its publication.2016Anthony CroninSee below2017Anthony CroninObituary for "an important mentor" of Tóibín2020Louise Glück2020 Nobel Prize in Literature2023Louise GlückResponse to Glück's death2024Go Tell It on the Mountain2 August 2024 was the centennial of James Baldwin's birth.2024Sigmund Freud, Thomas Mann, Henry JamesTóibín examines the three writers' initial enthusiasm for the outbreak of World War I.2025László Krasznahorkai2025 Nobel Prize in Literature
"Freud and the Writers", in Blauner, Andrew, ed., On the Couch: Writers Analyze Sigmund Freud, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2024,
Articles on other topics YearArticleSubjectNotes19941998The Great Famine2001September 11 attacksOpposing Mary Beard's excuses for the September 11 attackers2009Art, allegory and urination2021Pope Francis2026Review of Fintan O'Toole and Sam McBride, For and Against a United Ireland, University of Notre Dame Press, 177 pp. Quote: "The book is data-led, the arguments rational, the tone exemplary in its calmness. ... O'Toole and McBride recognize that the ... possibility of a referendum 'affects the way people think about a wide range of political, social and cultural issues in the here and now.' They recognize that if unity were to come through referendum, then 'loser's consent,' which they define as 'the willingness of those disappointed by the outcome to live with it because they accept that it is the freely expressed desire of the majority,' will be 'vital to the future peace and prosperity of everyone on the island.'" (p. 51.)
Poems TitleYearFirst publishedReprinted/collectedNotes"Cush Gap, 2007"2011The Times Literary SupplementCush Gap, a location in County Wexford, is also mentioned in works such as Brooklyn."Miró"; "In San Clemente"; "Lost for Words"; "Face"; "The Torturer's Art"2017The Times Literary Supplement"Father & Son"2021The New York Review of Books"Vinegar Hill"2022The New Yorker
Short stories TitleYearFirst publishedReprinted/collectedNotes"A Priest in the Family"2004London Review of BooksMothers and Sons"Barcelona, 1975"2005The Dublin ReviewOn the first orgy that Toibín attended at the age of twenty, at the house of an older painter. "The story is entirely real", Tóibín later said."One Minus One"2007About the death of his mother"Sleep"2015"Summer of '38"2013
References
External links