Colm Tóibín is one of Ireland’s most well-known writers. He graduated from the University College in Dublin and headed to Barcelona, the city that later inspired his first novel, The South (1990) and non-fiction work Homage to Barcelona (1990).

His non-fiction includes Bad Blood: A Walk Along the Irish Border (1994), The Sign of the Cross: Travels in Catholic Europe (1994), and The Irish Famine (1999). He edited The Penguin Book of Irish Fiction (1999), and published a book of essays Love in a Dark Time: Gay Lives from Wilde to Almodovar in 2002, when he also became a Fellow at the Centre for Scholars and Writers at New York Public Library, enabling him to research the life of Irish dramatist Lady Augusta Gregory for his book Lady Gregory's Toothbrush (2002).

He has written six novels including The South (1990), The Heather Blazing (1992), The Story of the Night (1996), The Blackwater Lightship (1999) which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, The Master (2004), for which he won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2006, and his latest novel Brooklyn (2009), winner of the 2009 Costa Book of the Year.

He continues to work as a novelist, journalist, literary critic and university lecturer, and divides his time between Ireland and the United States.

Website: www.colmtoibin.com 

Books

Eilis Lacey has come of age in small-town Ireland in the years following World War Two. Though skilled at bookkeeping, she cannot find a job in the miserable Irish economy.

When an Irish priest from Brooklyn offers to sponsor Eilis in America - to live and work in a Brooklyn neighbourhood "just like Ireland" - she decides she must go, leaving her fragile mother and her charismatic sister behind.

Eilis finds work in a department store on Fulton Street, and when she least expects it, finds love. Tony, a blonde Italian from a big family, slowly wins her over with patient charm. He takes Eilis to Coney Island and Ebbets Field, and home to dinner in the two-room apartment he shares with his brothers and parents. He talks of having children who are Dodgers fans.

But just as Eilis begins to fall in love with Tony, devastating news from Ireland threatens the promise of her future.