Gerard Donovan's JULIUS WINSOME: "A Small Masterpiece"

One of the most beloved novels from The Overlook Press in our forty years of publishing is Gerard Donovan’s elegant and masterful Julius Winsome. A longtime staff favorite and widely praised by critics, this is an astonishing novel not to be missed.

Living alone in a remote cabin, Julius Winsome’s world is shaken when his dog Hobbes is killed by hunters. That act Of carelessness – or is it cruelty? –sets Julius’s precarious mindset on end. Simply and furtively, revenge begins to creep into his mind. First published in 2006 and now available in a paperback edition, Julius Winsome wrestles with some of the most profound questions in life: What becomes of love when it is lost? Where is the line between justice and revenge? What becomes of a man with nothing left to lose?

Colum McCann, National Book Award-winning author of Let the Great World Spin, called Julius Winsome “a small masterpiece.” And The Financial Times called it “an enormously resonant, wise, and beautiful exploration of grief and solitude, and the bottomless legacy of violence.”

Gerard Donovan is an acclaimed Irish-born novelist, photographer and poet currently living in Plymouth, England, working as a lecturer at the University of Plymouth. Donovan attracted immediate critical acclaim with his debut novel Schopenhauer's Telescope, which was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2003. He is also the author of Sunless and a collection of short stories, Young Irelanders, both published by The Overlook Press.

New in Paperback: Gerard Donovan's YOUNG IRELANDERS

Just in time for St. Patrick's Day is a new paperback edition of Gerard Donovan's marvelous collection of short stories, Young Irelanders. These interrelated stories magnify the new Ireland and illuminate how the Irish are coping with its rewards and pressures: immigration from Eastern Europe and beyond, mid-life crisis, adultery and divorce, a lost sense of place and history.

Gerard Donovan is the author of three poetry collections and three novels: Schopenhauer’s Telescope (2003), nominated for the Man Booker Prize, Julius Winsome (2006) and Sunless (2008).

Gerard Donovan Reads from YOUNG IRELANDERS at Glucksman Ireland House in New York on September 18

Gerard Donovan, author of Julius Winsome and Sunless, will read from Young Irelanders, a new collection of short stories, on Thursday, September 18, 7pm, at the Glucksman Ireland House in New York. Don't miss this rare opportunity to hear one of the very best writers around, as he looks back on his native country of Ireland in a new book of short fiction. Free admission for Members of Glucksman Ireland House and for all students/faculty with a valid NYU I.D. card. For all others: $10 donation at the door. In order to ensure a seat, please RSVP to 212-998-3950 (option 3) or email ireland.house@nyu.edu.

Gerard Donovan's YOUNG IRELANDERS in New York Magazine

New York magazine's "Agenda" column quotes from Gerard Donovan's new collection of short stories, Young Irelanders, in this week's issue. Donovan will give a reading and talk on September 18 at the Glucksman Ireland House in New York. The author of Julius Winsome and Sunless, Gerard Donovan has been called a "Raymond Carver of modern western Ireland" by the novelist Joseph O'Connnor.

Gerard Donovan's YOUNG IRELANDERS

Joseph O'Connor, author of Redemption Falls and Star of the Sea, has high praise for fellow Irishman Gerard Donovan, whose masterful collection of short stories, Young Irelanders, has just published: "I've admired Gerard Donovan's writing since I first discovered it, and I thought Julius Winsome was one of the finest Irish novels of the last decade. . . . If you could imagine a Raymond Carver of modern western Ireland, you'd be getting close to what Donovan does. But he's entirely his own artist, possessed of what John McGahern said every writer needs first: a way of seeing the world. These stories are perfectly realised, with an immensely impressive composure that would in itself make them important. But what makes them unforgettable is their tension and power. Some of them are absolutely heartbreaking, others funny, some both. The sparks do not fly in a Donovan short story but the beauty has a smoulder that burns long in the reader. He is a master of the form and a true original. This book, for all its darkness and strangeness and brokenness, gives a kind of miraculous hope. It's a collection that will hold its own beside Claire Keegan's Walk the Blue Fields, Colm Tóibín's Mothers and Sons, Philip O' Ceallaigh's Notes from a Turkish Whorehouse and Anne Enright's Taking Pictures as one of the most consistently remarkable books of Irish short stories in recent years.We're seeing something of a renaissance in this beautiful genre, which led many of us, as youngsters, to an interest in literature. If Gerard Donovan's work were to be put on the Leaving Cert English course, it could well have the same effect." - Joseph O'Connor, Sunday Business Post, July 13, 2008.

Gerard Donovan's SUNLESS on The Believer's Short List for Best of 2007

Gerard Donovan's Sunless has been nominated for a 2007 Best Book Award from The Believer magazine! This extraordinary novel is set in the near future under the clear skies of Utah, and chronicles the darkly funny and emotionally stunted growth of a life overwhelmed with pharmaceutical solutions. Sunless is a masterful work of fiction from the author of Schopenhauer's Telescope, Julius Winsome, and the forthcoming Young Irelanders.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Gerard Donovan, author of Julius Winsome and Sunless, examines the changing face of Ireland in Young Irelanders, a stunning and elegiac collection of interrelated stories. In this marvelous volume coming in July 2008, Donovan returns to his home country of Ireland with a passion. The stories in Young Irelanders shine a fresh light on the New Ireland and how the Irish are coping with its rewards and pressures: immigration, mid-life crisis, adultery and divorce, a lost sense of place and history, and of course, what to do with all that prosperity.

Overlook Excerpt: From SUNLESS by Gerard Donovan

Gerard Donovan, author of Julius Winsome and Schopenhauer's Telescope, offers a bold and chilling statement on drugs, dealers, doctors, and the American condition in his new novel Sunless.


"The next morning, when I was getting my mother her morning dose, I slipped another pill into my mouth to layer the first, to keep the momentum going. I did that for a few days as each day crossed namelessly into the next. Could have been days, could have been weeks. The pills kept me pressed down and out of any place. Sometimes my mind seemed attached to my brain at the end of a string. I was on one side of the room, what I felt was the other side of the room, this is what I mean. Under a heap of blankets I waited for the shadows and lights that filled my dreams. One night I opened the windows wide to stay awake and the room filled with a white pale light from the salt and lit my lungs. I burned a candle and put it on the window sill to warm my face while I watched the dark. To anyone driving past I'd look like a spirit, a face in a long night with no body.

If they knew me they might say, That's Jimmy, he has no body. He puts himself at the window to be seen, even in a dream."

Two from Gerard Donovan: SUNLESS and JULIUS WINSOME

Two new offerings from Gerard Donovan this month: the critically acclaimed and deeply beloved Julius Winsome in paperback, and Sunless, a new novel (from which we will hear much more on The Winged Elephant) that Mr. Donovan has revised and rewritten from an earlier incarnation published in the UK as Doctor Salt. Looking ahead to 2008, Overlook will publish a stunning collection of Gerard Donovan's short stories, Young Irelanders, about his native and not-always-green Emerald Isle.