DIGILEC Revista Internacional de Lenguas y Culturas
Digilec 13 - Reseñas (2026), pp. 1-4
Fecha de recepción: 31/03/2026
Fecha de aceptación: 15/05/2026
Fecha de publicación: 31/07/2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.17979/digilec.2026.13.14032
e-ISSN: 2386-6691
BOOK REVIEW: TRANSCULTURAL INSIGHTS INTO
CONTEMPORARY IRISH LITERATURE AND SOCIETY: BREAKING
NEW GROUND
RESEÑA DE LIBRO: TRANSCULTURAL INSIGHTS INTO
CONTEMPORARY IRISH LITERATURE AND SOCIETY: BREAKING
NEW GROUND
Marina RODRÍGUEZ GORDILLO
Universidade da Coruña
Editor: María Amor Barros-del Río
Collection: Routledge Studies in Irish
Literature
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Place of publication: New York
Page count: 231
Year: 2025
ISBN: 978-10-3254-972-9
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Transcultural Insights into Contemporary Irish Literature and Society: Breaking
New Ground, edited by María Amor Barros-del Río, is a book published by Taylor &
Francis Group in 2025. The editor of the book and the contributors are tenured academics
from different universities around the world.
This book is a well-curated compilation of critical essays of canonical Irish
Literature. The main goal is to be a unique exchange of intercultural dialogues written by
several tenured professors from different universities around the world. The volume
applies a dedicated transcultural lens to Irish Literature and Society. Through a diachronic
approach, the book examines the transcultural patterns from the 20th century to present
days. The introduction to the book is written by the editor María Amor Barros-del Río,
professor of English Studies at the University of Burgos, and secretary of the Spanish
Association of Irish Studies (AEDEI). In the introduction, Barros-del Río presents a
theoretical manifesto for the transcultural shift in Irish Studies. As a result of
globalisation, Ireland underwent a process of transformation that led to migration flows,
exchanges of ideas, and technological expansion, all of which contributed to the
phenomenon of multiculturalism. Taking into account Mary Louise Pratt’s concept of the
‘contact zone’ and the question of the idea of ‘the New Irishness’ as “fixed and
immutable” (xix), Barros-del Río establishes the thesis of this book, presenting Irish
identity as a fluid and transcultural exchange. Barros-del Río argues that literature is the
primary source of social change in Ireland and, with this book aims to provide a critical
tool for students and ‘Break New Ground’ through transcultural dialogue.
The book is structured in three parts and a Coda. Each section contains a series of
essays that follow the chronology of the topics covered in the book. The first part entitled
“Texts that Blur Frontiers: The Island of Ireland and Beyond”, comprises three essays
that analyse literary works which demonstrate that Irish identity is not a fixed concept,
but instead, a fluid conversation occurring both at home and across the world. The first
essay is written by Mariana Bolfarine and is entitled “Transculturality and the Ghost of
Roger Casement in Ulysses, by James Joyce.” Bolfarine blurs the frontier between
nationalism and globalism and looks at how Joyce’s Ulysses employs the figure of
Casement’s ghost to connect Irish struggles and identity to global human rights and
colonial critiques in Africa and South America. The second essay, titled “Censorship and
the Poetry of Cicaran Carson and Marin Sorescu: A Transcultural Reading,” author
Shannon Kuta Kelly blurs the frontier between geographies, as it compares the “frontier”
of Northen Ireland during the Troubles with the “frontier” of life under a communist
regime in Romania. “Transculturality and Seán Dunne’s Translation of Russian Poetry,”
the title of the third essay and written by Stephanie Schwerter, blurs the frontier between
languages. By translating poets like Akhmatova or Pasternak, Dunne shows that an Irish
poet can find home in the words of someone from a completely different era.
The second part of the book is entitled “Transcultural Writers and Global
Entanglements” and contains three other essays that address contemporary writers who
treat diversity and hybridisation as a result of transnational encounters and physical
borders. The first essay of this second part, is named “Social Borders and Contact Zones
in Leland Bardwell’s Different Kinds of Love.” Burcu Gülüm Tekin examines Leland
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Bardwell’s short stories as an act of ‘contact zones,’ Pratt’s concept; as a space where
different cultures and marginalised groups meet. The essay centers on how Bardwell
breaks the social borders of 20th century Ireland and creates a new, transcultural version
of “Irishness.” The fifth essay is entitled “Contested Boundaries and Uncharted
Entanglements in Evelyn Conlon’s Moving About the Place” and is written by Melania
Terrazas and María Amor Barros-del Río. This text focuses in Evelyn Conlon and the
concept of mobility. Conlon’s female characters emigrate to Australia or London, as a
way to escape Ireland’s restrictions. The last essay of this second part is written by
professor at the University of Coruña, David M. Clark. Entitled “Transculturality and Ken
Bruen’s Crime Fiction,” this essay explores how Ken Bruen entangles the Americanhard-
boiled fiction in a place such as Galway. A sense of connection to American jazz culture
and film noir is more predominant than with Irish culture.
The third part of the volume is entitled “Irish Social Diversity and Contemporary
Literature in Dialogue” and contains four essays that focus on Ireland’s current ethnic and
racial diversification and the way that instances of hybridisation, diversity and
assimilation are depicted in literature (Barros-del Río xxiii). The first essay of this part is
entitled “Transcultural Practices, Teenage Pregnancy and Abortion in Irish Young Adult
Literature” and it is written by Iria Seijas-Pérez. This essay looks at Young Adult (YA)
novels like Claire Hennessy’s Like Other Girls and Moïra Fowley-Doyle’s All the Bad
Apples, “two novels that portray teenage efforts to access abortion in pre-Repeal Ireland”
(Barros-del Río xxiii). “Migrations in Times of Referendums. Transcultural Negotiations
in Donal Ryan’s Strange Flowers and Oona Frawley’s Flight: “Why Ireland?... Don’t Go
to England,” corresponds to the second essay of the book. Margarita Estévez-Saá,
analyses Strange Flowers by Donal Ryan, and Flight, by Oona Frawley, two novels that
explore how migration is depicted in the context of Brexit and the 2004 Ireland’s
Referendum on Citizenship. Asier Altuna-García De Salazar contributes the third essay,
entitled “Negotiating Second-Generation Transcultural Irishness: Susan Ryan’s The King
of Lavender Square,” which highlights Ireland as a multicultural hub that has given rise
to a second generation of Irish people who are redefining the meaning of Irish identity.
Finally, the last essay of this volume is titled “Resistance and Activism in Queer and
HIV/AIDS Irish Theatre” and it is written by J. Javier Torres-Fernández. This essay
addresses four Irish theatre productions through a transcultural lens in a diachronic way:
first, Declan Hughes’s Digging for Fire (1991); second, Sebastian Barry’s The Pride of
Parnell Street (2007); third, Philip McMahon’s Once Before I Go (2021); and fourth,
Panti Bliss’s If These Wigs Could Talk (2022) (Torres-Fernández 158). The author argues
how Irish queer theatre has been influenced by transcultural traits from the American
panorama.
The final part of the book is a Coda, a separate, concluding section that completes
the text. Entitled “The Past, the Present and the Wonderful, Worrisome Future:
Transculturalism, Memory and Crisis in Irish Studies” and written by Gerry Smith, this
chapter reflects on the past and the present of Irish Studies and “suggests potential modes
of re- orientation” (Barros-del Río xxv). The Coda serves as a final checkpoint for the
volume, as Smith cautions scholars to utilise transculturality to address real-world
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problems such as social injustice and the climate change crisis, as it is a powerful tool for
comprehending contemporary Ireland.
I strongly believe that Transcultural Insights into Contemporary Irish Literature
and Society: Breaking New Ground, clearly encompasses the essence of transculturality
across all aspects of Irish literature and society. In addition to serving as a means of
broadening the reach of Irish literature in educational settings. This book provides a new
cross-cultural perspective on Irish literature and society. I highly recommend this book to
students and academics interested in modern Irish literature, as it can serve as a reference
book, as well as to readers of Irish authors who wish to understand the social context that
inspires their novels.
