The Irish Writer and the World is a major new book by one of Ireland's most prominent scholars and cultural commentators. Declan Kiberd, author of the award-winning Irish Classics and Inventing Ireland, here synthesises the themes that have occupied him throughout his career as a leading critic of Irish literature and culture. Kiberd argues that political conflict between Ireland and England ultimately resulted in cultural confluence and that writing in the Irish language was hugely influenced by the English literary tradition. He continues his exploration of the role of Irish politics and culture in a decolonising world, and covers Anglo-Irish literature, the fate of the Irish language and the Celtic Tiger. This fascinating collection of Kiberd's work demonstrates the extraordinary range, astuteness and wit that have made him a defining voice in Irish studies and beyond, and will bring his work to new audiences across the world.

Declan Kiberd is Professor of Anglo-Irish Literature at University College Dublin.

1. Introduction: the Irish writer and the world; 2. The fall of the stage Irishman; 3. Storytelling: the Gaelic tradition; 4. Writers in quarantine? The case for Irish studies; 5. Synge, Yeats and Bardic poetry; 6. George Moore's Gaelic Law Party; 7. The flowering tree: modern poetry in Irish; 8. On national culture; 9. White skins, black masks: Celticism and Negritude; 10. From nationalism to liberation; 11. The war against the past; 12. The elephant of revolutionary forgetfulness; 13. Reinventing England; 14. Museums and learning; 15. Joyce's Ellmann, Ellmann's Joyce; 16. Multiculturalism: the strange death of Liberal Europe; 17. The Celtic Tiger: a cultural history; 18. The city in Irish culture; 19. Strangers in their own country: multiculturalism in Ireland.