Glenn Patterson: 9 books

‘Glenn Patterson is Northern Ireland’s prose laureate’ – Will Self Here's Me Here: Further Reflections of a Lapsed Protestant features a wide and thought-provoking section of Glenn Patterson's writings. With his trademark wit and intelligence. Patterson offers his wry take on life on this...

It is the summer of 1969 and ten-year-old Mal is finding it difficult to settle into his new home, a housing estate on the outskirts of Belfast. He befriends a brash and rebellious teenager, Francy, who revels in his own status as an outsider and has set up camp in the local dump. ...

Saturday, 28 January 1967. It is a day like any other for eighteen-year-old Danny, pulling pints behind the bar of the International Hotel in Belfast, watching the comings and goings of the eccentric clientele. But ordinary days like this are almost over. The hotel has already...

Acclaimed Belfast novelist Glenn Patterson's classic novel of a day in the life in that city: a funny, brilliantly observed, bittersweet snapshot of a moment in 1967 just before everything changed. "If I had known history was to be written that Sunday in the International Hotel I might...

Breakfast in a hotel, a stroll through town then it’s off to a meting with clients, followed by dinner and bed … what could be more routine in the life of a travelling businessman? But this is Hiroshima, no ordinary city. And for this Belfast businessman, the past is not...

In the cold dawn of Christmas Day 1897, Gilbert Rice, 85 years old and with failing health, recounts his journey into manhood in a city on the cusp of great change. Belfast in the 1830s was a city in flux. Industrialisation had led to an increase in commerce and the rapid swell of the population...

It was one of the most bizarre episodes in the history of the Troubles in Northern Ireland: the construction, during the war's most savage phase, of a factory in West Belfast to make a luxury sports car with gull-wing doors. Huge subsidies were provided by the British government. The first car rolled...

First of September 1974. Craig Robinson is starting secondary school. Instinct tells him he needs to keep his head down. The last thing he needs, therefore, is someone carrying the name St John Nimmo to be sent to sit beside him, but that is what he gets. Across town Maxine Neill is starting...

When Drew Linden’s new job brings him back to his native Belfast, he is determined to remain distant from everything that once tied him there, including his friends and family. But as three generations of family history unfold, it becomes clear that the past Drew has been running from is...