Liverpool University Press London Irish Fictions: Narrative, Diaspora and Identity

This is the first book-length study of the literature of the Irish in London. By examining over 30 Irish novels, short stories and autobiographies set in London since the Second World War, London Irish Fictions encourages readers to travel, vicariously, through the complex psychological landscapes of belonging and cultural allegiance found in these intensely personal perspectives on the Irish experience of migration. As well as bringing new research to bear on the work of established Irish writers such as Edna O'Brien, John McGahern, and Emma Donoghue, this study reveals a hitherto unexplored body of literature, diverse in form and content. By synthesising theories of narrative, diaspora and identity into a new methodological approach to the study of migration, it sheds new light on how migrant identities are negotiated, mediated and represented through literature. London Irish Fictions also examines the specific role that the metropolis plays in literary portrayals of Irish migrant experience as an arena for the performance of Irishness, as a catalyst in the transformations of Irishness and as an intrinsic component of second generation Irish identities. In so doing, it reassesses broader notions of exile, escape and return, and contributes to our understanding of the central role of narrative in configuring migrant cultures and identities. In this regard, it has particular relevance to current debates on migration, multiculturalism and cultural identities in both Britain and Ireland, especially in the light of an emerging new wave of Irish migration in the post-'Celtic Tiger' period.