We Don't Know Ourselves

A Personal History of Ireland Since 1958

We Don't Know Ourselves
Fintan O'Toole
RRP:
NZ$ 26.99
Our Price:
NZ$ 21.59
Paperback
h198 x 129mm - 624pg
1 Sep 2022 UK
International import eta 7-19 days
9781784978341
Out Of Stock
Currently no stock in-store, stock is sourced to your order
Fintan O' Toole - Ireland' s leading public intellectual and author of Heroic Failure - tells a history of Ireland in his own time. Fintan O' Toole - Ireland' s leading public intellectual and author of Heroic Failure - tells a history of Ireland in his own time - a brilliant interweaving of memoir and historical narrative. Fintan O' Toole was born in 1958, and so his life covers Ireland' s journey out of underdevelopment and domination by the Church and the country' s transformation into the relatively prosperous and tolerant society that it is today. But along the way there was a sectarian civil war in the North, which cast a dark shadow over the whole island, and bitter struggles for intellectual, civil and sexual freedoms. The Church fought a long rearguard action to defend its entrenched positions in education, healthcare and childcare. The truth about child abuse and institutional cruelty emerged only slowly, and women still had to die to make possible the liberalisation of Irish laws on contraception and divorce. This is a very personal history by a writer who is considered by many to be the country' s leading public intellectual. He was a participant in many of the controversies and and arguments of the past 35 years, and knew the leading literary, musical and political figures of those decades.
PRAISE FOR FINTAN O' TOOLE: ' Good journalists like Fintan O' Toole are the ones to look to if you want your lifelines to the contemporary reopened or the jump leads to your ethical sense connected up' Seamus Heaney. ' A witty attack on the fantasies that drove Brexit . . . Clever, over the top, but etertaining political writing' The Times Books of the Year, on Heroic Failure. ' Fintan O' Toole in Heroic Failure displays an amazing command of the facts, but what distinguishes his book is the quality of the mind at work, the sharpness of the analysis, the style' Colm Toibin. ' I loved the book. It' s hugely entertaining and engrossing, and great fun too. I loved the link to punk - fascinating . . . It' s a terrific book' Roddy Doyle, on Heroic Failure. ' A wildy entertaining but uncomfortable read . . . He has nailed us to the floor with a nine-inch nail' -- Jonathan Coe, on Heroic Failure
Fintan O' Toole is one of Ireland' s leading journalists, drama critics, biographers, polemicists and historians. He is the author of acclaimed biographies of Richard Sheridan and Sir William Johnson and the bestselling Ship of Fools.
Status: Active
ISBN-13: 9781784978341
Published: 1 Sep 2022
Published In: United Kingdom
Imprint: Head of Zeus
Publisher: Head of Zeus
Format: Paperback
Height: 198mm
Width: 129mm
Pages: 624

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