Old SwordsThe eleven stories in Old Swords by Desmond Hogan, his first publication since Larks Eggs: New and Selected Stories (2005), collect newly minted shards of experience focused on the lives of the dreamers and marginalized who populate his imagined worlds. They range in time and place from France, Germany and Italy in the nineteenth century to Ireland of the 1950s and the present day. Their concerns are fragility and identity expressed through the outer

this book redraws the prevailing picture of the man and presents a fascinating portrait of an age

to a deadly moment on a Malayan airstrip

poised prose

ÔThe God Who Eats CornÕ

and then with the Christian Brothers in Synge Street

and the glitter and rarity of a Faberge egg

islanders and evangelicals

Caravaggio was the greatest artist since Titian

Irish-speaking family on the Inishowen peninsula of Co

Sinead McCoole gives an intimate account of Hazel’s artistic and political preoccupations

Susan is forced to confront a ruptured relationship with her only son

environmentalists