![]() ![]() Well, my Uncle Eddie was an IRA commander, and he did disappear. A lot of the political stuff is directly out of my family. It is a conflation of two or three family histories, with my own family the most prominent among them. I have been insistent in saying that it's fiction, it's not a memoir, but there is a good deal of autobiographical material in it. How much of you and your family is in the novel?Ī good deal. Salon talked with Deane by telephone from Dublin. And then it was on, off, a struggle between him and me, me deciding, no, I don't want to go on with this, and him encouraging me to proceed. "Bill plagued me for ages," said Deane, "until I began to write some. ![]() The novel, short-listed for the United Kingdom's most prestigious literary prize, the Booker, tells the story of a Northern Irish family haunted by secret sorrows and caught up in the long tragedy of their native land.ĭeane says that "Reading in the Dark" was "dragged out of him" over several years by Bill Buford, the former editor of Granta, now the literary editor of the New Yorker. ![]() ![]() The eminent Irish critic and author, holder of a chair at Notre Dame, editor of the Norton "Field Day Anthology" (the definitive collection of Irish literature), acclaimed poet and renowned Joyce scholar, has just published his first novel, "Reading in the Dark," to extraordinary accolades. At 57, Seamus Deane has pulled off one of the rarest of literary feats: moving from the top ranks of academia to the top ranks of literature. ![]()
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