Colm Toibin Books in Order

A short novel set in a remote Catalan village where a young man, Miquel, searches for his missing alcoholic mother in deep snow and, with the help of an orphaned farmhand, begins to imagine a different future.

A series of lectures and essays in which Tóibín revisits the novels and essays of James Baldwin, blending close reading with memoir to show how Baldwin’s explorations of race, sexuality and faith shaped his own understanding of writing.

A sequel to Brooklyn set about twenty years later, in which Eilis Lacey, now living among her Italian-American in-laws on Long Island, receives a shocking visit that sends her and her teenage children back to Enniscorthy to confront the past.

A collection of personal and critical essays in which Tóibín writes about his Catholic childhood in Wexford, illness, Irish politics, the Vatican and the writers and cities that shaped him, offering an intimate map of the life behind his fiction.

Tóibín’s first poetry collection, gathering decades of work about Enniscorthy, Dublin, Venice and other places, and exploring politics, queer love, family ghosts and mortality in spare, story-like poems.

A richly detailed novel about German writer Thomas Mann, following him from youth in Lübeck through marriage, exile from Nazi Germany and old age, as he balances artistic ambition, public life and secret desires over tumultuous decades.

A brief, wintry tale set over a single day near the solstice, following a family in rural Ireland as ordinary errands, visits and small hesitations expose buried tensions and the quiet costs of staying or leaving.

An art book that pairs Sean Scully’s stark photographs of the stone walls on Ireland’s Aran Islands with an essay by Tóibín, exploring how landscape, memory and abstract art echo one another across time.

A study of the fathers of Oscar Wilde, W. B. Yeats and James Joyce, blending biography, literary criticism and Dublin history to show how three unruly patriarchs shaped, inspired and haunted their famous sons.

A dark retelling of the Oresteia in which Clytemnestra, Electra and Orestes narrate the aftermath of Iphigenia’s sacrifice, turning a myth of gods and fate into a brutal, human story of revenge, betrayal and uneasy inheritance.

An illustrated exploration of Henry James’s friendships with artists such as John Singer Sargent and John La Farge, showing how portraiture, travel and the visual arts fed directly into the moods and characters of his fiction.

A humorous, sharply observed tour of contemporary Irish life that riffs on politics, history, small-town habits and national quirks, offering a tongue-in-cheek survival guide to navigating the island’s contradictions.

A compact, personal study of poet Elizabeth Bishop, in which Tóibín traces her journeys from Nova Scotia to Key West and Brazil and explains how loss, exile and close observation shaped her precise, emotionally charged poems.

A novel about a young widow in late-1960s Enniscorthy learning to rebuild her life after her husband’s death, as Nora Webster raises four children, navigates small-town expectations and slowly claims a new, independent self.

A brief, intense novel narrated by Mary in old age, as she remembers her son’s execution and rejects the miracle-laden version his followers prefer, insisting instead on the messy, human truth of grief and fear.

A collection of essays about writers and their families, ranging from Jane Austen and Henry James to Yeats, Thomas Mann and Tennessee Williams, examining how quarrels, loyalties and absences within households shaped great literature.

Stories about characters estranged from home or kin—set in Ireland, Spain, Pakistan and beyond—in which desire, exile and memory tug people between the families they were born into and the fragile ones they make for themselves.

A gathering of Tóibín’s essays on Henry James, reading the master’s stories, letters and life through a fellow novelist’s eye and revealing how James fashioned character, point of view and silence on the page.

A quietly powerful novel about Eilis Lacey, a young woman who leaves 1950s Enniscorthy for a job in Brooklyn, falls in love with an Italian-American plumber and is later pulled between life in America and family ties in Ireland.

A collaboration with photographer Agnès Pataux that combines stark landscape and portrait images from across Ireland with text reflecting on history, myth and the ways the land has shaped the character of its people.

A taut novella about a Dublin criminal who has stolen a priceless painting and tries to keep one step ahead of the police and his associates, even as his own mother’s loose talk threatens to destroy his careful plans.

A story collection set mostly in contemporary Ireland, each piece tracing a charged moment when a mother and son must face secrets, betrayals or unexpected loyalties that have been quietly shaping their lives.

A nuanced portrait of Henry James during the late 1890s, following him through failed theatrical ambitions, friendships and family losses as he retreats into work and quietly turns private longing into some of his greatest novels.

The published text of Tóibín’s stage play, in which a small group of Dublin characters gather after a tragedy and, over the course of one evening, uncover old wounds and fragile hopes in a city changed by recent history.

An essay collection on gay writers and artists, including Oscar Wilde, Roger Casement, Thomas Mann, Elizabeth Bishop and James Baldwin, exploring how secrecy, courage, desire and loss shaped both their lives and their work.

A short, engaging study of playwright and cultural activist Lady Augusta Gregory, tracing her unconventional love life, role in founding the Abbey Theatre and influence on Yeats and the Irish literary revival.

A reader’s guide co-written with Carmen Callil that selects and discusses two hundred of the best novels in English since 1950, mixing classics and surprises while explaining what makes each book worth seeking out.

A concise history of the Great Famine paired with a selection of original documents, examining how the catastrophe has been remembered and misremembered and how it continues to shape Irish and Irish-American identity.

A novel set in 1990s Ireland in which three generations of women—grandmother, mother and daughter—gather at a seaside house to care for a son dying of AIDS, confronting old grievances while learning how to speak honestly.

A slim volume collecting interviews and short profiles, bringing a range of cultural figures into focus through relaxed conversations that reveal their working lives, obsessions and off-guard moments.

A sweeping novel set in Buenos Aires from the years of military dictatorship into the age of AIDS, following Richard Garay, a gay man of English descent, as he navigates secret desires, political violence and rising prosperity.

A critical study of Irish poet Paul Durcan, edited by Tóibín, that gathers essays and reflections on Durcan’s surreal humour, political bite and tender depictions of family life.

An illustrated guide to Ireland created with Bernard Loughlin, combining photographs, maps and short entries on the country’s history, regions, landmarks, festivals and sporting life for readers planning visits or tracing roots.

A travel book in which Tóibín follows Catholic rituals across Europe—from Poland and Spain to Croatia and back to Ireland—observing processions, shrines and pilgrimages while reflecting on his own complicated relationship with the faith.

A novel about Eamon Redmond, a reserved High Court judge who spends weekends on the Wexford coast, where memories of childhood, politics and family loss slowly erode the certainty that has guided his public life.

A collection of journalism centred on Tóibín’s reporting from Argentina on the trials of the military leaders responsible for the Dirty War, alongside other political pieces from Latin America and Ireland.

Tóibín’s debut novel, following Katherine Proctor, who leaves her husband and child in 1950s Ireland for Barcelona, falls in love with a Spanish painter and discovers both passion and hardship in a remote Pyrenean village.

A vivid portrait of Barcelona that moves from Roman foundations to Gaudí and Miró, the Civil War and the late-Franco years, mixing history, reportage and memoir drawn from the years Tóibín lived in the city.

A collaboration with photographer Tony O’Shea in which images of 1980s Dublin street life are paired with Tóibín’s text, capturing a city of buses, markets and ordinary moments on the cusp of social change.

A travelogue of Tóibín’s walk along the Irish border in the tense summer after the Anglo-Irish Agreement, recording border rituals, funerals and conversations as he explores how history and division shape everyday lives.

An early account of Tóibín’s journey on foot from Derry to Newry, describing the landscapes and communities that straddle the Irish border and the mix of fear, resilience and dark humour he encounters along the way.

A reportage book on the 1980s phenomenon of Ireland’s “moving statues,” in which contributors investigate reported Marian apparitions and ask what this wave of devotion reveals about belief and skepticism in modern Irish Catholicism.