Alan Titley is a distinguished Irish language author, journalist, and critic. He holds the position of Professor Emeritus of Modern Irish at University College Cork and is a respected columnist for The Irish Times. His writings delve deeply into the nuances of the Irish language and its rich cultural heritage, characterized by a distinctive literary voice. Titley's contributions are highly valued for their literary merit and their significant impact on contemporary Irish literature.
The plot revolves around Queen Maeve's ambitious campaign to seize the legendary Brown Bull of Cooley, which leads to a strategic twist when the leaders of Ulster fall victim to a sleeping spell. This magical element sets the stage for a clash between the two factions, exploring themes of power, ambition, and the consequences of greed in a richly woven tapestry of myth and legend.
Despite the richness of the short story in Irish literature, there remains a relative absence of stories translated from the Irish. This collection of stories aims to help fill this gap. Micheal O Conghaile is one of Ireland's foremost contemporary Irish-language prose writers. His stories are filled with dissidents and rebels, protagonists who find themselves suddenly revealed as errata in someone else's master narrative. Padraic Breathnach is probably the most prolific short story writer in Irish, with over 150. The four included here show isolated individuals struggling against inherited authority structures, and they may tell us more than any sociologist about the destiny of community. He is glorious and unmatched in his depiction of decay, the decay of social, cultural, and moral fabrics, of landscape and mind gone to seed. Dara O Conaola's stories share a real generic affinity with that other favored form of Gaelic tradition, the lyric poem. His stories are full of wonder and imagination. Lastly, Alan Titley is probably best known as a novelist. Politically, his stories probably represent a more radical, subversive side, while his language reveals a linguistic virtuosity that verges on the carnivalesque.