The News from Dublin

short stories from the bestselling author of Brooklyn and Long Island

By: Colm Tóibín

Narrated by: Derbhle Crotty, Darragh Shannon

'Short stories to astonish and delight' Financial Times
'Tales of quiet power' The Guardian

In The News from Dublin, a beautiful collection of short stories from the bestselling author of Brooklyn and Long Island, Colm Tóibín delves into the days and nights of those living far from home: lives of great longing, at a great distance from past lives and past selves.

A woman in Galway hears of the death of her son in the First World War. An Irishman seeks anonymity in Barcelona, haunted by crimes he has committed. A man goes to Dublin from Enniscorthy to implore the Minister for Health for a special favour. A young woman is pregnant during the Spanish Civil War. An undocumented worker finds himself living an illegal life and must leave San Francisco, and his child, after thirty years in America. Three sisters who have been living in Argentina decide to return to Catalonia.

'Tóibín is the consummate cartographer of the private self, summoning with restrained acuity (and a delicious streak of sly humour) the thoughts his characters struggle to find words for' – Clare Clark, Guardian

Critic reviews

Readers who have enjoyed Tóibín’s novels will find much to admire in this collection, especially in those stories that are rooted in these imagined and half-submerged pasts. It’s the drama of what isn’t said, what doesn’t occur – but what might

After this, I’m going to have to read every damn thing he’s ever writ­ten. He really is that good

Lives lived far from home unfold with Tóibín’s trademark spare, piercing prose. As in his bestsellers such as Brooklyn and Long Island, this collection traces longing, exile and the ache of unfinished lives

Grief, betrayal and moral complications are explored across nine tales of quiet power that take us from Argentina to County Wexford

The News from Dublin by Colm Tóibín — short stories to astonish and delight. Nine masterful tales chart unbreakable family connections — and complications — from Ireland to South America and Spain

A master of understated emotions

Colm Tóibín is a writer of extraordinary emotional clarity . . . Tóibín perfectly understands the instantaneous nature of the ideal short story; the sense that the pen is going straight into a major vein (Kate Saunders)

Tóibín [is] a master of his art . . . exquisite

Tóibín has conducted an exhilarating masterclass in extract the maximum effect from the minimum of prose, with the leanest and cleanest narrative line . . . His gifts are so remarkable (Robert McCrum)

Tóibín is a class act and his eye for the absurdities of Irish life keeps the pages turning

A writer evidently at the height of his powers

Tóibín writes prose of a heart-breaking beauty

Tóibín is a subtle, intelligent and deeply felt writer

It is in his emotional choreography that Tóibín shows himself to be an exceptional writer

It’s truly remarkable that a writer of Tóibín’s great felicity, immense seriousness and general large awareness – a writer so naturally gifted as a novelist – can deliver short stories of such subtle empathy and brilliance. He’s dazzling (Richard Ford)