St Mary's Research Fellow Published in Times Literary Supplement

Dr Keith Hopper, Research Fellow in the Centre for Irish Studies at St Mary’s University, Twickenham has written the lead fiction review in a recent issue of the Times Literary Supplement. The article, entitled The Family Romance, is a review of Anne Enright’s new novel The Green Road. Earlier this year, Anne Enright was named as the inaugural Laureate for Irish Fiction, a new initiative developed by the Irish Arts Council to help promote “a greater engagement” with Irish literature, both nationally and internationally. Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon, who chaired the committee that elected her, stated, “Incisive, insightful, intellectually rapacious, and emotionally rapt, Anne Enright has for almost twenty-five years helped the Irish make sense of their lives, from the nursery to the national debt. Through her varied and far-reaching fiction, she has also helped the rest of the world make sense of Irish life.” Dr Hopper said, “Anne Enright is an important voice in contemporary Irish literature. The Green Road, which revisits the themes of her earlier fiction – including The Gathering, which won the Man Booker Prize in 2007 – is a solid addition to Enright’s substantial oeuvre, and is a testament to her ongoing engagement with Irish society and culture.” —Keith Hopper teaches Literature and Film Studies for Oxford University’s Department for Continuing Education, and is a Research Fellow in the Centre for Irish Studies at St Mary’s University, Twickenham. He is the author of Flann O’Brien: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Post-modernist (revised edition 2009) and general editor of the twelve-volume Ireland into Film series (2001–2007). He is also the co-editor (with Neil Murphy) of Flann O’Brien: Centenary Essays (Dalkey Archive Press, 2011) and The Short Fiction of Flann O’Brien (Dalkey Archive Press, 2013). He is a regular contributor to the Times Literary Supplement, and is currently co-editing a series of four books by and about the Irish writer Dermot Healy (2015-16).