With the bookshop where she works about to close, Laura Horsley finds herself agreeing to help organize a literary festival deep in the heart of the English countryside. But when an innocent mistake leads the festival committee to believe that Laura is a personal friend of the author at the top of their wish-list, she finds herself travelling to Ireland to persuade the notorious recluse (and her literary hero) to come out of hiding.

"One of nine children born into a penniless North Dublin family, Nuala O'Faolain was saved from a harrowing childhood by her love of books and reading. Though she ultimately became one of Ireland's best-known columnists, her professional success did little to ease her loneliness and longing for a deep connection to the world. Are You Somebody? distills her experiences into a wisdom that can only come from an obstinate refusal to shrink from life....

A biography of the Irish genius relating details of his lie to the substance of his books.

"The Letters of Samuel Beckett offers for the first time a comprehensive range of letters of one of the greatest literary figures of the twentieth century. This volume includes letters written between 1929 and 1940. It provides a vivid and personal view of Western Europe in the 1930s, marked by the gradual emergence, against his own hesitations and the indifference or hostility of others, of Beckett's unique voice and sensibility. Even in the tentativeness...

"From one of the most engaging and brilliant writers of our time comes a collection of essays about growing up in Ireland during radical change; about cancer, priests, popes, homosexuality, and literature"--

"[P]rovides explosive new evidence of the political machinations behind Wilde's trials for sodomy."--Cover.

Through letters, contracts, photos, interviews, speeches, reviews, and memorabilia - most of which has never before been made public - a rare personal and professional friendship unfolds between these two oddly shy daredevils, shifting and turning the tide of literature in America. Barney Rosset, more than any other publisher, fiercely advocated for the most daring and influential writers of the 20th century. Through his Grove imprint, whole generations...