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43 - Irish Fiction and Migration in the Long Twenty-First Century

from Part V - The Long Twenty-First Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 September 2026

Christopher Morash
Affiliation:
Trinity College Dublin
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Summary

‘Irish Fiction and Migration in the Long Twenty-First Century’ observes that while migration has been a topic prominent in Irish fiction since at least the middle of the nineteenth century, more recent novels have considered the Irish subject overseas as a product of what Zygmunt Bauman calls ‘liquid modernity’, migrants in a world characterised by neoliberalism and globalisation. The chapter considers works of outward migration in the long twenty-first century, beginning with William Trevor’s Felicia’s Journey (1994) and extending to later works, such as Colm Tóibín’s Brooklyn (2009) and E. M. Reapy’s Red Dirt (2016), as well as historical fiction including Roddy Doyle’s Oh, Play That Thing (2004). The flows of migration into Ireland are also considered, in relation to Anne Enright’s The Green Road (2015), Oona Frawley’s Flight (2014), and Donal Ryan’s Strange Flowers (2020), concluding that recent Irish diasporic fiction is characterised by multiple displacements.

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