The News from Dublin
Stories
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected Mar 31, 2026
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
One of Literary Hub's Most Anticipated Books of 2026
From Colm Tóibín, “one of the world’s best living literary writers” (The Boston Globe), comes a brilliant collection of nine short stories, many never-before-published, set across Ireland, Spain, and America—about the complexities of family, longing, loss, and love.
Celebrated as “his generation’s most gifted writer of love’s complicated, contradictory power” (Los Angeles Times), Colm Tóibín is a master of short fiction as well as the novel, able to summon an extraordinary intensity of emotion in a brief tale. The eleven stories transport readers across continents and eras.
In “The Journey to Galway,” a mother who has learned of the death of her son, a fighter pilot in WWII, travels to Galway to inform his wife and their three now fatherless children. “Sleep,” originally published in The New Yorker, explores the rift between two lovers as one of them cannot reckon with his grief and fear after the death of his brother. Death, again, is a central character in the title story, “The News from Dublin,” as Maurice Webster travels to Dublin to try to save his younger brother who is dying of tuberculosis. Maurice must petition the health minister for access to a new experimental drug, and this is the only hope.
Tóibín’s stories are rich with the complexities of family dynamics, the haunting pull of the past, and the quiet revelations that define our lives. His characters, whether navigating the aftermath of war, or forbidden love, or the desires of a girl in Catalan, or the quiet struggles mundane life, are rendered with illuminating, unforgettable empathy and insight.
The News from Dublin is an exquisite introduction to Tóibín’s short fiction for new readers who may have discovered Tóibín with the publication of Long Island, and a glorious new collection for longtime fans of this “achingly beautiful writer…with infinite compassion” (The Miami Herald).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The protagonists of these finely crafted stories from Tóibín (Long Island) reflect on their lives and how they wound up where they are. For the aging Irish narrator and his younger Jewish American lover in "Sleep," it was "Germany, Ireland, the internet, gay rights, Judaism, Catholicism: they have all brought us here. To this room, to this bed in America." In "The Journey to Galway," an Irishwoman grapples with grief in the wake of WWII. The story begins with the unnamed woman noting an "unusual silence," and her tale comprises painful recollections of those she lost in the war. "A Free Man" follows Joe, a failed Maynooth pontifical student and former math teacher, from Ireland to Barcelona, where he hopes to start a new life following a lengthy prison term for molesting teen boys. "The Catalan Girls," a novella, centers on discreet and resolute Montse, who, as a 10-year-old, migrates with her mother and elder sisters Conxita and Núria ("the rude one") from Spain to Argentina only to return 50 years later. The quiet humanity of Tóibín's characters is as arresting as his knack for rendering relationships and place. This collection offers much to admire.
