Inventing Ireland is exactly what its title claims--an act of exuberant creativity. Nimbly, skillfully, and almost with a sense of near-wonderment at his own discoveries, Kiberd explores the continuities between Irish past and Irish present. And by focusing on what he calls 'revered masterpieces,' and by examining them in the wider social context out of which they came, he fashions a nation that is hospitable to all its prickly constituents.

Inventing Ireland is exactly what its title claims--an act of exuberant creativity. Nimbly, skillfully, and almost with a sense of near-wonderment at his own discoveries, Kiberd explores the continuities between Irish past and Irish present. And by focusing on what he calls 'revered masterpieces,' and by examining them in the wider social context out of which they came, he fashions a nation that is hospitable to all its prickly constituents.

Inventing Ireland is that completely unusual thing: a highly readable, joyfully contentious book whose enormous learning and superb understanding of the literary text will introduce readers for the first time to a remarkably lively panorama of Irish culture during the last century. Full of novel readings, theoretical investigations and audacious connections, Declan Kiberd's book lifts Ireland out of ethnic studies and lore and places it in the post-colonial world. In doing so he situates its great cultural traditions where they jostle not only the major texts of English literature, but also those of writers like Salman Rushdie and García Márquez. The result in a dazzling, bravura performance.

Inventing Ireland is exactly what its title claims--an act of exuberant creativity. Nimbly, skillfully, and almost with a sense of near-wonderment at his own discoveries, Kiberd explores the continuities between Irish past and Irish present. And by focusing on what he calls 'revered masterpieces,' and by examining them in the wider social context out of which they came, he fashions a nation that is hospitable to all its prickly constituents.