Ship in Full Sail: The Laureate Lectures and Other Writings

In Ship in Full Sail Colm Tóibín’s ‘Laureate Lectures’ bookend thirty-four crystal clear essays, one written each month in the course of his tenure as Laureate of Irish Fiction. The myriad topics they embrace include Artificial Intelligence, reading Ulysses, the discomfort of Salman Rushdie in the wilds of County Dublin, Bob Dylan in concert, a life of Thom Gunn and the author’s role in a campaign to save the House of The Dead.

The lectures themselves ruminate on abiding interests — traditional Irish music and the visual arts. Ship in Full Sail — a veritable cornucopia — offers unmatched insights into the range of thinking and ways of working of one of Ireland’s belovèd writers.