Introduction

In the concluding lines of a paper entitled ‘Irish national identity after the Celtic Tiger’1 published in 2012, Gerry Smyth asked the following question: ‘what does it mean – what can it mean – to be Irish in the wake of the Celtic Tiger?’ Literature is one place where the question of Irish identity for the future can begin to be imagined. And yet, only a few years ago many voices2 claimed that Irish writers were still writing about past history, portraying Ireland in the 1950s and 1960s, while the big Celtic Tiger novel was nowhere in view. More recently, however, while Ireland is still experiencing the after-shock of the 2008 crash, literary critics3 have rallied around a new wave of writers. While the sheer number of excellent debut novels and brilliant short stories being published at the moment in Ireland is literally difcult to keep pace with, some Irish authors, at home and abroad, read the signs of the excesses of the Celtic Tiger long before the speculative bubble burst. Not only did they narrate its folly early on, but they had indeed started to imagine how the future for Ireland might be envisioned, and what it might possibly mean to be Irish today.