In an age of unrestrained Russian-bashing, the figure of Fyodor Dostoevsky might seem a provocative choice for this Public Intellectual series. He remains, however, in my view, the greatest writer of prose fiction who has ever lived. His greatest novels The Devils/Demons (1872) and The Brothers Karamazov (1880) are, frankly, unsurpassed in world literature. As … Read more
With Christmas fast approaching, a familiar debate will resume in homes, offices and their Zoom equivalents as to what constitutes a legitimate Christmas movie. Much of the banter will centre on Die Hard as the preeminent example of an action movie which has legitimately crossed into the holiday season category. Some may even cite it … Read more
Cassandra Voices is delighted to be collaborating with the charity Collateral Global on a photographic competition depicting life under lockdown, open to professionals and amateurs alike. It will culminate in the production of a photography book to be published under the Cassandra Voices imprint. The winning entry will receive a first prize of €1,000, with … Read more
I spent twenty years working as an adventure sports guide. In my early twenties, I was a whitewater guide on rivers like the Zambezi and White Nile in Africa. In my thirties I worked as a mountain leader, guiding trekking expeditions to Kilimanjaro, Everest base camp, the Andes and the Himalayas. While it may seem … Read more
In search of the my favourite troubadour all roads lead to Flanders, Belgium, then on to France and French Polynesia. There, in the obscure cemetery of Atuona Hiva Oa – alongside the impressionist Paul Gaugin – rests the mortal remains of Jacques Brel. Aged just forty-seven, Brel had been under a settled expectation of death … Read more
One must begin by asking a begging question: is literary criticism, in Ireland, dead? Recently, reading Susan Sontag’s 1966 essay ‘Against Interpretation’, this reviewer noticed the absence of the pronoun ‘I’, which has become ingratiated in the ‘I’ singular, the most fantastic, the singular phenomenological self-view. The singular ‘I’ – the Me, Myself, and I … Read more
Out with the old, in with the new. In the same month that Don’t Look Back in Ongar (2024), the final (27th) instalment of the Ross O’Carroll Kelly fictional autobiography was published, the Irish-language musical comedy Kneecap (2024) quickly became the year’s highest-grossing cinema release. The differences between these two are more than apparent: the … Read more
“Trump Inhabits Trumpistan”, writes Chris Agee in his rampaging poetic satire, Trump Rant: “Trump Is the Wolf of Washington”. Written over a four-year period from 2017 onwards, and arranged as an expanding series of mock-newspaper headlines, Agee’s book begins as an act of stinging personal portraiture and ends as a thorough-going investigation of America itself … Read more
Few writers can do grief and loss like John MacKenna. He is, without question, the John McGahern of the ‘Ancient East’. Where McGahern has put the villages and drumlins of Leitrim along the inland cusp of the ‘Wild Atlantic Way’ at the heart of his writing, the landscape of South Kildare, and its surroundings are … Read more
These are extraordinary times. Last month serial sexual abuser Harvey Weinstein, had his 23-year sentence squashed; a Channel 4 documentary aired new sexual misconduct claims against Kevin Spacey, and Woody Allen and Roman Polanski are feted at the Venice Film Festival. ‘Hiding in plain sight’ – and having ruthless lawyers – still seem to work … Read more