World War One photographs, the Celtic Tiger and the path to progress have all influenced Deirdre Madden’s latest novel as she tells Philip Cummins.
STRIDING across the cobble-stoned pathways of Trinity College, Deirdre Madden appears to be at one with Dublin.
It’s interesting to watch because Madden is widely characterized as a uniquely Northern Irish novelist, best-known as the writer of One By One in the Darkness, set during the week of the IRA ceasefire in 1994.
The Antrim native, who has lived in Dublin for decades, with her husband, poet Harry Clifton, is now on novel number eight, the recently published, Time Present and Time Past.
It’s a novel which has been written in-between teaching creative writing at the central Dublin hub meaning its gestation was “a very slow process” as she’s tried to balance her workload. “It’s not always easy,” she says, “so I am very happy to get this latest book finished.”