Publisher's Synopsis
Hailed in the Irish Times as a 'great Irish novelist', Neil Jordan is, in the words of Fintan O'Toole, 'a peculiarly emblematic figure of cultural change'. Yet, extraordinarily, such critical acclaim has come about without detailed scholarly engagement with Jordan's most sustained interrogation of Ireland and notions of Irishness: his fiction. This book fills this gap in contemporary Irish literary criticism, and, while Jordan's filmmaking is often discussed, the focus here is on his published work: his early volume of short fiction, his many novels, and several of his uncollected stories. The result is a work which will enhance understanding of contemporary Irish cultural studies while also suggesting future directions for the criticism of other artists operating in multiple creative disciplines.
