We Don’t Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Ireland since 1958 by Fintan O’Toole was named as the book of the year 2021 by An Post. The announcement took place during a special television show on RTE One last evening.
“To have a book that you hope speaks to people outside of a particular category, I suppose it’s trying to recognise something that maybe hits a chord more generally with Irish people with where Ireland is right now” said O’Toole.
There were six books nominated for the award and are as follows:
- We Don’t Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Ireland Since 1958 – Fintan O’Toole
- Your One Wild and Precious Life – Maureen Gaffney
- A Hug For You – David King, illustrated by Rhiannon Archard
- Aisling and the City – Emer McLysaght and Sarah Breen
- Did Ye Hear Mammy Died? – Séamas O’Reilly
- Beautiful World, Where Are You? – Sally Rooney
According to O’Toole, it took forty years to complete the book.
“We Don’t Know Ourselves is a feast: a deeply absorbing chronicle of the ‘known and unknowable,’ and of the profound transformation of a place.” Patrick Radden Keefe, New York Times best-selling author said about the book.
We Don’t Know Ourselveshas already won awards including Orwell Prize for Journalism, the European Press Prize in 2017 and the NewsBrands Ireland Journalism Awards Broadsheet Columnist of the Year.
Source: Journal.ie