The News from Dublin: Stories
Mar 2026 · Sold by Simon and Schuster
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About this ebook
From Colm Tóibín, "one of the world's best living literary writers," (The Boston Globe), a brilliant new collection of nine short stories—many never before published.
Colm Tóibín is a master of the short story, able to summon an extraordinary intensity of emotion in a brief tale. Described as “his generation’s most gifted writer of love’s complicated, contradictory power” (Los Angeles Times), he brings to these stories an astonishing clarity and compassion. In “The Journey to Galway,” a mother learns of the death of her son, a fighter pilot in WWII, and must travel from Dublin to share the news with his wife and their three now fatherless children. In “Sleep,” published in The New Yorker, two lovers part as one of them cannot acknowledge or face his grief and fear after the death of his brother. And in the title story, death, again, is a central character as Maurice Webster travels to Dublin from Enniscorthy to petition the health minister for access to a new drug being tested for tuberculosis. Maurice’s younger brother is dying of TB, and this is the only hope.
Set in Spain, Ireland, and America, these gorgeous stories explore longing, estrangement from family, grief, the pull of the past, and complex, transcendent love.
This collection includes:
- “The Journey to Galway” (originally published in Faber Anthology)
- “A Free Man” (new)
- “Sleep” (originally published in The New Yorker)
- “The News from Dublin” (originally published in Faber Anthology)
- “A Sum of Money” (new)
- “Barton Springs” (originally published in Marlene Dumas catalogue)
- “Summer of ’38” (originally published in The New Yorker)
- “Five Bridges” (originally published in The New Yorker)
- “The Catalan Girls” (new)
Colm Tóibín is a master of the short story, able to summon an extraordinary intensity of emotion in a brief tale. Described as “his generation’s most gifted writer of love’s complicated, contradictory power” (Los Angeles Times), he brings to these stories an astonishing clarity and compassion. In “The Journey to Galway,” a mother learns of the death of her son, a fighter pilot in WWII, and must travel from Dublin to share the news with his wife and their three now fatherless children. In “Sleep,” published in The New Yorker, two lovers part as one of them cannot acknowledge or face his grief and fear after the death of his brother. And in the title story, death, again, is a central character as Maurice Webster travels to Dublin from Enniscorthy to petition the health minister for access to a new drug being tested for tuberculosis. Maurice’s younger brother is dying of TB, and this is the only hope.
Set in Spain, Ireland, and America, these gorgeous stories explore longing, estrangement from family, grief, the pull of the past, and complex, transcendent love.
This collection includes:
- “The Journey to Galway” (originally published in Faber Anthology)
- “A Free Man” (new)
- “Sleep” (originally published in The New Yorker)
- “The News from Dublin” (originally published in Faber Anthology)
- “A Sum of Money” (new)
- “Barton Springs” (originally published in Marlene Dumas catalogue)
- “Summer of ’38” (originally published in The New Yorker)
- “Five Bridges” (originally published in The New Yorker)
- “The Catalan Girls” (new)
From Colm Tóibín, "one of the world's best living literary writers," (The Boston Globe), a brilliant new collection of nine short stories—many never before published.
Colm Tóibín is a master of the short story, able to summon an extraordinary intensity of emotion in a brief tale. Described as “h...
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Ratings and reviews
1 review
Monkfish2 Monkfish2
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April 11, 2026
Wexford's most reliably melancholic export since the potato blight, Tóibín has assembled nine stories demonstrating what the Irish do best: feel everything, say nothing, move on. The Joyce comparison is apt and insufficient. Where Joyce aimed at paralysis, Tóibín aims something gentler and in two stories more devastating. The collection's crown: an unnamed narrator in New York wakes screaming, gets hypnotized into briefly inhabiting his dead brother's final minutes on a hallway floor in Ranelagh. The moment the 'I' silently becomes a 'he' costs the reader something genuine. Elsewhere: a schoolteacher's tubercular brother may be saved by streptomycin obtainable only through a Fianna Fáil minister; a retired teacher on the sex offenders register gets a letter signed by all eight siblings telling him to arrange his own funeral. Joyce concentrated on the paralysis. Tóibín calls it life. The news is punctual. The tragedy is that everyone receiving it know it's coming. ❤️ 🇮🇱
About the author
Colm Tóibín is the author of eleven novels, including Long Island, an Oprah’s Book Club Pick; The Magician, winner of the Rathbones Folio Prize; The Master, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Brooklyn, winner of the Costa Book Award; and Nora Webster, winner of the Hawthornden Prize, as well as three story collections and several books of criticism. He is the Irene and Sidney B. Silverman Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University and was named the 2022–2024 Laureate for Irish Fiction by the Arts Council of Ireland. In 2021, he was awarded the David Cohen Prize for Literature.
Colm Tóibín is the author of eleven novels, including Long Island, an Oprah’s Book Club Pick; The Magician, winner of the Rathbones Folio Prize; The Master, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Brooklyn, winner of the Costa Book Award; and Nora Webster, winner of the Hawthornden Prize, as ...
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