Where There’s Smoke

Last Autumn, the main street of Dublin was the setting of a violent anti-immigration riot led by far-right agitators: buses and trams were set on fire, shops were broken into and looted, people held up signs which read “Irish Lives Matter”. When I recounted this to my friends and family abroad, they were shocked and puzzled; however, there was little surprise in my circle of friends in Dublin, for we knew this was just the peak of an anti-immigrant sentiment that had been steadily growing among a portion of the Dublin population.

• • • • • • •

It was November 23rd, and I had travelled to the coastal suburb of Dun Laoghaire to celebrate Thanksgiving with my American partner and a dear friend of ours. We spent a magical day reading and writing in the local seafront library, and I told myself that I had a lot to be thankful for. Once we felt satisfied with our day’s accomplishments, we indulged in some pizza to ease our growling stomachs. A Vonnegut quote kept echoing in my head: “if this isn’t nice, what is?”.

As we sat down to eat, our friend showed me a headline on her phone: there had been a stabbing outside a Dublin school, the victims were three children aged four to six and a teacher. We were still figuring out the details regarding the stabbing, when I got a message from my flatmate saying “careful in town, riots all over the place”.

After that, my social media got inundated with photos and videos of the protest: shop windows getting smashed, people yelling racist and xenophobic messages, fire eating up buses and trams: I felt like I was looking at a war zone. I then read that the riots had been triggered by the fact that the perpetrator of the stabbings was Algerian. 

I got various messages asking if I was okay, and then I was sent a list of safe houses where people who weren’t able to get home could spend the night. Buses along my commute weren’t running and the city centre wasn’t safe, so getting home via public transportation wasn’t an option. In the end, we managed to reach our flat by sharing a 70€ taxi, which we were lucky enough to find amid the chaos.

• • • • • • •

In the following days, as the dust settled, and as the people of Dublin worked hard to repair what had been destroyed during the riots, I collected more information regarding the happenings of November 23rd. The attacker, albeit Algerian in origin, was a naturalised Irish citizen who had lived in Ireland for two decades; instead, the man who stopped the stabbing was a Brazilian immigrant who heroically jumped off his Deliveroo bike and used his helmet as a weapon to disarm the aggressor and save the children.

I’m mentioning this to make the point that this riot, despite being triggered by the stabbing, had actually very little to do with the real mechanics of that tragic incident: instead, it was directly related to a sentiment of xenophobia that had been steadily growing in the city, and which is strictly linked to the various issues faced by the city, such as its rampant housing crisis

According to online sources, Dublin is the city that was struck the hardest by the housing crisis that has been spreading in various parts of the globe. This means that accommodation is nearly impossible to find, with landlords getting inundated by emails mere minutes after they advertise a new property online. Getting a property viewing is a huge challenge, and if you do get one, it is unlikely that you will be chosen to be the new tenant because competition is immense and fierce. Once you do find a place, you have to pay astronomical prices or settle for very inconvenient locations and living conditions. Some of the people I’ve met in Dublin shared a house with twenty-five (that’s right, 25) others. I’ve even met people who rented one half of a double bed, with a stranger renting the other half, for 600€ per month each. 

The city is also poorly connected: there is no subway, and the LUAS tram only has two lines laid in the shape of a cross, which means that it reaches very few areas. The most used means of transportation is the Dublin bus, which is slow, unreliable, and frankly, a little smelly. Traffic in the city is bad enough that my morning commute would take me almost one hour and a half via bus, although I would only be covering about 11km (approximately 7 miles).

This is a long winded way of saying that Dublin has become a difficult city to live in, and very little has been done to make life easier for its inhabitants. A few solutions could be building more apartments, lowering the rent of the existing ones, increasing the lines of the LUAS tram, adding new types of public transportation, diversifying and increasing the bus lines. None of this has been done; and, with the immigration flux growing, migrants have been scapegoated by far-right agitators as the sole culprits of people’s rightful discomfort.

• • • • • • •

In recent years, Dublin has seen a sudden spike in immigration, both from mainland Europe and from other continents. The reason Dublin has become a more appealing destination for EU citizens is that, after Brexit, it is no longer possible for us to move to the UK without a VISA: Ireland has therefore become the closest English-speaking country that can be accessed without any VISA requirement, due to its being part of the EU. 

Dublin is also an appealing destination for US expats, since all the American corporations in the EU either have their HQ or one of their divisions in Dublin. Moreover, the US and Ireland have had a longstanding friendly relationship, therefore Americans are given preference over other groups when applying for Irish VISAs, with much lower requirements in applying for long term residency than those asked of other nationalities. It goes without saying that English being the predominant language constitutes further encouragement for Americans to migrate there.

As I have found out in the past year, Dublin is an extremely popular destination for Brazilians, too: according to the Embassy of Brazil, there are about 70,000 Brazilians living in Ireland, and most of them live in Dublin. That is because they can migrate to Ireland on a stamp 2 visa, which allows them to work part-time while school is in session, and full-time during holidays. This is a rare VISA arrangement, since most English-speaking countries, such as the UK, have much stricter requirements for Brazilian immigrants: indeed, were they to enter those countries on a student VISA, they wouldn’t be able to legally work enough hours to survive alongside their studies. 

These are only the three nationalities that I’m most familiar with, but there are many other groups that migrate to Dublin for endless reasons, making the city a wonderfully diverse cosmopolitan hub in Europe.

• • • • • • •

As months passed, small episodes of my personal life gave me a taste of just how much the hatred had grown in the city. Once, a drunk guy got on my bus and started threatening all its foreign passengers, including the driver, who was Ukrainian. He pointed at us and said, “I know some of you aren’t Irish”. A lady reported him to the police, and he got off the bus with one last threat to the driver: “I’m gonna remember your face”. 

A Brazilian student at the English school where I worked told me that he was thrown off his bike and attacked by teenagers who insulted him for being an immigrant; another one of my students, also from Brazil, told me that a similar group had thrown eggs at him.

A range of people threw crumpled fliers at me once as I was talking to a friend, who suggested they might have heard my foreign accent.

When the riots happened last Thanksgiving, I was all but surprised.

My favourite part about living in Dublin was that the city served as a gate to many different cultures and places. I could walk down the street and hear people speaking Portuguese, Turkish, Chinese, Ukrainian, Spanish, Italian, Russian, and Japanese, just to name a few. There I have met friends from all over the world, and I felt enriched with awareness of many new cultures. In Dublin, I’ve even learned a little Portuguese by listening to my Brazilian students talk every day. The Irish capital has the potential of being a bridge between the EU and the rest of the world, with endless financial, cultural, and linguistic advantages.

I moved away from Dublin last December because I had the privilege of having that option. I don’t know how things will develop there in the future, but I sincerely hope that the current state of hatred will be mitigated and that the various issues of the city will be addressed with empathy, love, and compassion. 

I deviated from my usual column style for this article to spread awareness about a situation that is not often discussed abroad, and that is very close to my heart.

My Forever Home

Recently I travelled to Glasgow, Scotland, to spend a few days in the city that saw me change from a confused teenager into a marginally less confused adult. As soon as my Glasgow pilgrimage was over, I got a new tattoo. I dedicate this instalment of my column to these two seemingly unrelated facts.

I lived in Glasgow for a total of four years, from the beginning to the end of my undergraduate degree. Across those years I stayed in three different flats, and every time I go back to visit I make sure to walk all the way to every one of them; it’s a process that usually involves wearing headphones and listening to my favourite playlists from my Glasgow years or chatting with friends as I stroll along the path that used to be my everyday route to and from university.

My first flat was in the area known as Kelvinhaugh Gate: it was a very simple student accommodation which offered neither a living room nor a sofa, and which was always gleefully trashed by its inhabitants and all their friends and acquaintances. All its furniture was composed of an unpalatable mix of old wood, grey, and painfully bright blue hues; yet, it was the only place I’ve ever lived where I had my own bathroom, and for that, among other things, my memories of it are filled with joy.

After that came Oban Drive, which had the appeal of being “a real flat”, rather than a student accommodation. My first real flat had the smallest kitchen I’ve ever seen in my life, smaller than a closet and rendered somewhat hostile-looking by its horrible fluorescent lights: to this day I blame it for killing my chances of developing any kind of culinary skill. We also had a bathroom with a mysterious dark hole on its ceiling, right above the toilet; still, the rooms were spacious, and even if there was no living room, we quickly managed to turn it into a welcoming home. No amount of words could capture the amount of fun and happiness that I experienced in that shitty, mouldy flat.

My last Glaswegian flat was in the Woodlands area; I was thrilled to move there because the rooms were absolutely gigantic, we had a huge kitchen and an even bigger living room, complete with two couches and two armchairs. Of course, it was far from perfect: the bathroom was a bit small, and it had a ridiculously tiny mirror which would be more accurately described as a tile where you could see your reflection; all the floors were mysteriously tilted, so that if you were to set a bottle on its side it would quickly roll to the opposite end of the room; we also had mice, a kitchen that somehow never looked clean no matter how hard we polished it, and a permanently sticky floor-cover that would lift up every time we would hoover, revealing rotten wood underneath it. Regardless, it was and still is the biggest flat I’ve ever stayed in, and I cherish its memories, which look back at me, fragmented, like my own tiny reflection in our bathroom tile.

𓉞

As I reach my former home in Oban Drive, I discreetly peek inside the window, trying to imagine who lives there now, and how they have arranged that space I know so well. I recall some small details from when I was a tenant there: the way the floor tiles felt against our red Henry the Hoover as I cleaned my room, the way I had organised my kitchen shelf, the noise the kettle made when it went off.

I picture my bedroom the way it used to be, with my sheets still on the bed, the colourful ones I bought as soon as I moved to Scotland, hoping that their bright hue would contrast with the grey Scottish skies. I picture the fairy lights that I had stuck to the wall above my bed, with small polaroid pictures clipped along the cable; I recall how once the whole thing had fallen on me in the middle of the night and woken me up, after which I had moved it to a different wall. I picture my posters, the horrible blue chair that came with the room, as well as the desk that I had bought and put together, and which I felt so proud of.

To young me, away from home for the first time, that room and the wee trinkets I filled it with felt more mine than anything I’d ever owned up until that point; and yet someone else lives there now, with their fairy lights, their bed sheets, their small trinkets. I had to leave the desk behind though, so it’s possible that they might still be using it as their own. Isn’t it crazy? Someone else studying on the desk I put together, laying one of their hands on it as they use the other to apply nail polish, filling it with clutter, calling it their desk.

As I think about that, I remind myself that the wardrobe was already in that room when I moved in, and it looked a bit wonky, like a kid had put it together. I start picturing a bunch of strangers assembling furniture for this one room and then passing it on, a little bit more complete, a little bit better equipped, to someone else.

Just as my old homes are now filled with new objects and new tenants, the face of the city has been changing too, with new businesses substituting the ones that were there back when I was part of Glasgow’s population. The bright blue café where I always used to meet one of my closest friends has now turned into an elegant clothing shop, its walls constellated with serious-looking shelves; one of my favourite shops has changed the design of its logo to one that I’m quick to criticise for being ugly and illegible; the best tea shop in the whole world hasn’t survived the pandemic.

As I walk along the Clyde, I feel like I’m looking at someone that I used to know really well for the first time after two decades without contact. The changes are hitting me all at once, leading to a silly, yet unavoidable, consideration: “my, you’ve really changed, I guess this must mean I’ve really changed, too”.

𓉞

As my Glaswegian pilgrimage came to an end, I booked the third tattoo appointment of my life. At that time, I remembered a conversation I had had a long time before, back in my tattoo-less era, with someone who is dear to me and who was also, and still is, tattoo-less.

“I think I understood why people get tattoos now,” they said, solemnly.

“Really? Why is that?” I replied.

“To prove that they’re brave. They are not scared of the pain; they’re not scared of the commitment of having something on their body forever. It’s like a proof of courage, you know, for all the world to see.”

“That sounds plausible,” said sixteen-year-old me.

***

I was always one of those people who appreciated tattoos on other people, but who didn’t even dream of getting one myself. I found them too permanent, too serious, nothing I could think of seemed important enough to earn a permanent space on my skin. I found myself questioning all the values that I regarded as linked to every design, until I would inevitably decide that I didn’t feel committed enough to any specific value to get it tattooed on my body. It took me almost a decade to realise that you might want a tattoo because it looks good, it makes you feel happy, and it compliments your style, and nothing more.

𓉞

It’s been almost ten years from the conversation dating back to my tattoo-less era, and I can’t say I’ve understood with certainty why people get tattoos, but I am aware of why it’s something that I now personally enjoy. There are two reasons: first, our body, temporary as it may be, is the most permanent of our homes. Our forever home, if you will, at least for an atheist like me who isn’t hoping to inhabit any other shell after this one. It makes sense to make it mine, make it pretty, make it cosy. Turn it from a house into a home.

A similar, albeit different reason, is that we don’t choose the body we’re born into. As Alain de Botton puts it, it can often feel like the body we’ve been given doesn’t represent us, as if they had cast the wrong actor to play our role in the movie of life.

Tattoos are a way to reclaim this body that we haven’t chosen, to let something of what’s inside of ourselves determine our outside, so that it feels a bit more ours, a bit more representative of who we feel we are. That is the reason I enjoy tattoos, they’re small details of my physical existence that were chosen and determined by myself only: not by my genes, not by my environment, not by someone else. How many other permanent traits of ours can we say this about?

𓉞

I will always consider Glasgow my home, but I am also aware that, like a dear friend that lives far from me, she will evolve independently of me in ways that I cannot predict and might not always appreciate. As long as I can, I will never stop going on silly pilgrimages to my various Glasgow homes, nor will I stop picturing their inhabitants, hoping that they are cherishing those old walls, and that those walls are in turn treating them well.

However, my body is my forever home, and it’s easier to remember and cherish this if I give myself some time to really settle in the place and make it mine, which might at times require doing some decorating.

Supermarket Tale

Doubts are currently being cast upon the prehistoric division of labour which gave men the role of hunters and women that of gatherers: a new study suggests the opposite may have been the case instead. That makes no practical difference to me on this early Sunday afternoon, surrounded by hordes of people who are bravely venturing inside the various aisles of the Blanchardstown supermarket. No gatherers or hunters here, only attentive label-interpreters, budgeting experts, or in some cases, reckless spenders: in one word, consumers.

The price tags on the shelves constitute a painful reminder of my place in capitalist society, as I find myself having to pass on delicious-looking products that have the potential of sending me into bankruptcy in favour of their less appealing, cheaper equivalents.

If I lived in prehistoric times, my brain would help me survive by storing information about where to find edible berries, or how to chase down and kill small animals that would then become my dinner. After millennia of evolution, my brain, which has the same structure as that of my ancestors, constitutes a source of information about which brands of jam are cheaper, and which of the cheap brands guarantee decent nutritional values rather than just being composed of a deceiving orange mix of sugar and chemicals with an apricot drawn on the label. I have also memorised which plant-based milk is discounted this month, as well as where to find the most decent coffee imitation of the brand that I’d actually like to drink.

I therefore venture inside the supermarket assuming that I will have access to all this information, my shopping list having been carefully organised to match the layout of the supermarket, which is engraved in my brain after endless Sundays spent roaming those aisles. The list starts with fruits and veggies, then moves on to cheese, fish, cold cuts, tinned tuna, plant-based milk, etcetera. Centuries of evolution have made me capable of closing my eyes and picturing exactly where the gluten free section is, and where every single product I’m interested in is stored within that section. I can even see each of their price tags, and approximate the total amount of money I’m going to spend with impressive accuracy before even stepping in the building. Thank you, hunter-gatherer ancestors.

However, this Sunday something appears to be tragically different. My amygdala fires up the same danger signal that my prehistoric relatives would get when being chased by a predator, and I feel my chest tightening. The shelves of the supermarket are covered by a long, white drape. On the drape, a sign announces that they are in the process of changing the layout of the supermarket to offer us “a more optimal shopping experience”, and that they are “sorry for any inconvenience caused”.

The inconvenience caused is indeed quite significant: all the habitual shoppers are lost and confused, and although none of them are talking to each other, I can tell we’re all silently facing the same challenges: where did they move the smoked salmon? And what about the tinned tuna? And the cereals? Where is the baking section?

The shop assistants are caught up in this storm of questions: I see a few of them hiding in the less popular aisles, and as I briefly catch their avoidant gaze I tell myself that, no matter how much money they make, they should be making more.

I walk around the new, counterintuitive supermarket layout, and it takes me actual ages to find everything I need. I tell myself that it was way better before, and then I worry that I’m getting less open to changes as I age. I tell myself that I could have arranged all of this better myself, and then I worry I’m becoming arrogant. I tell myself that supermarkets back home had way better products, prices, and layout, and then I worry that I’m naïvely idealising the past.

My quarter-life crisis is in full swing by the time I realise that smoked salmon is nowhere to be found, and I’m going to have to either give up my plan of cooking salmon and asparagus pasta for dinner, or speak to an Actual Human Being to facilitate my search. I queue in front of the fishmongers for a good ten minutes before I realise that I’ve been standing in the wrong spot, and that the actual queuing spot has been moved as part of the New Layout Project.

I’m close to giving up when the fishmonger spots me and, out of pity, sends his assistant my way to help me. This fishmonger assistant is completely covered in white scrubs and smells of fish, like the improbable mix between a marine biologist and a surgeon. Despite this, he has a warm, friendly smile.

“Smoked salmon, eh? Follow me.”

I follow him all the way to the fruit aisle, which turns out to also be where some of the fish is kept. This new layout is just terrible… Oh no. Why is he pointing at this big empty spot in the refrigerated section? Surely it’s not…

“The most popular product in the supermarket!” He jokes, his face stretched in a big smile. “Sorry about that.”

“Wait, does that mean…?”

“Yeah, no salmon. Sorry pal. We’re all out. Might get some again tomorrow.” My heart sinks to my stomach.

“Is there anywhere else I could find salmon? Maybe a different shop nearby, or…?”

“Yes, there is,” he says gravely. “You can get it from the sea!” He exclaims with a smile and a wink. “Can you fish?”

I shake my head, defeated.

“Well, there’s nothing I can do for you then.”

Sorry, hunter-gatherer ancestors.

Sleepless in Dublin

My eyes are closed. A faint melody finds its way to my ears from the furthest edges of darkness. At first, the melody is so quiet that I have to listen carefully to be able to hear it, but it grows louder with every passing second. It is a hypnotically cheerful jazz tune, where the musicians take turns to dominate the melody and carry it somewhere new. I try to make a mental list of all the instruments I can hear: trumpet, piano, bass, drums. Any more specific analysis of the tune would be too sophisticated for my inexperienced ears. Once I start getting used to the music, a deep voice asks:

“Sogno o son desto?”, Am I dreaming or am I awake?

As I attempt to reply, muffled noises leave my throat in the form of air bubbles. I am incredulous: how can this be? I must be underwater. Yet, the jazz band continues playing its crystal-clear tune, which is in no way altered by the presence of water. My eyes refuse to open. The same voice echoes again,

“Sogno o son desto?”

The question sounds a bit more demanding this second time. I try really hard to respond, but my voice comes out trapped in air bubbles.

I force my eyes open, and I can’t believe what I’m seeing. I’m sitting in my favourite armchair inside the biggest, oldest bookshop in Dublin; however, I am underwater. And so are the tall shelves full of books, and the armchair I’m sitting on, and the jazz quartet, too. The voice booms one more time,

“Sogno o son desto?”

This time I can speak normally, for I have become a natural component of this underwater environment. I say, “can it please be both?”.

Our roles must have reversed because the voice answers me in the shape of air bubbles, which hit my face in a way that makes me feel like I’m being scolded. I suddenly feel an itch around my eyes, and I immediately realise that I have grown a second pair of eyelids, so that, although one of my sets of eyelids is open, the second one is still closed. With great effort, I manage to open the second set of eyelids, too. That’s when I awaken, on the bookstore armchair. A child is violently blowing soap bubbles in my face. A woman yells something at him and the child starts weeping. I mutter to myself, “stavo sognando”, I was dreaming.

✬

Even after waking up, I still cannot shake the unsettling sensation of being under water. When I raise from the armchair, my limbs are heavy and slow, and each one of my clumsy movements requires great effort. Once I’m on my feet, my hand slowly reaches my face, and it touches my eyes in a way it’s never done before, not to scratch them or rub them, but to check that they’re still in their place, covered by my one set of heavy eyelids. I feel both relief and an incomprehensible disappointment in confirming that everything is where it should be.

As I move towards the Classics section of the bookstore, I wonder if my sleep could have taken me to an alternate universe where gravity is three times stronger than the one on my planet. At my destination, I notice a whole subsection dedicated entirely to the various editions of all of James Joyce’s works. I look at the various editions of Dubliners and select the one that I find more aesthetically pleasing. I look at the price, let out an involuntary gasp, and place it back on the shelf. Then I select another edition which is also aesthetically pleasing but also has a less discouraging price tag. I slowly make my way to the counter and purchase it. As I take my change, I notice that the salesperson’s hand is completely covered in scales. Or is it a tattoo of scales? Before I can investigate further, my heavy feet have taken me out of the shop, and back onto Dawson Street.

✬

I have read the book Dubliners before, but this time I don’t want to read it: I want to walk it. I open it to the chapter called Two Gallants, and, after engaging with the jokes and the banter between the two characters of Corley and Lenehan, I start retracing their steps across the city. It is strange to be able to do this, the geography of this city really hasn’t changed much in one hundred years. Every time the characters stop somewhere, I do the same. At the end of the walk, I pass my gym in Baggot Street and finally reach Stephen’s Green. That’s where the two characters finally reunite, and Corley shows Lenehan the gold coin in his hand. I let my body fall into a sitting position on one of the benches of Stephen’s Green park. A seagull walks in my direction and then abruptly turns back to pursue the sandwich in the hand of a tourist. I let my limbs relax again.

✬

Among all the stories in the book Dubliners, I’ve always had a soft spot for the one called Eveline. This is a story that one can’t walk as easily as Two Gallants, but one can feel it and smell it, instead. As my eyes diligently follow each line of the story, my nose is invaded by the smell of dusty cretonne. As Eveline describes her yearning for a new life, I let the epiphany that she must leave the city unsettle my feelings like a wave in the calm summer sea; her subsequent paralysis freezes my limbs while stirring up a storm inside my head. I shut the book and my eyes closed and let my fingers investigate the texture of the bench I’m sitting on in a feeble attempt to ground myself.

✬

Once I have managed to quiet down the storm inside me, I manage to lift my eyelids, heavy as rocks. A child swims past me, his skin completely covered in scales. He floats into his mother’s embrace. Her skin is as scaly as that of the child. A question finds its way out of my mouth in the form of a series of air bubbles. The child swims fast towards the bubbles and lets out a delighted giggle. As he pops each bubble with his curious finger, the words they contain become audible.

“Sogno o son desto?”

To the People Behind the Words: My Small Tribute to ILFD 2023

In the month of May, the city of Dublin gifted me a wonderful, ten-day-long literary festival. I say it was gifted to me because despite it being a public initiative that was open to all—the topics, guests, and location were so accurately tailored to my taste, that I couldn’t help but feel that I had received a very special present picked out just for me.

The festival took place in the park right across the street from the building where I teach English to adults. It also started on a Friday, which is the day on which teachers are expected to take the students out on an excursion in the city. I therefore had the chance to attend the festival on the very first day it was on, as well as to take my whole class there as part of their Friday outing.

✿

Friday, May 19th is when I took my students to the festival. Upon our arrival, I immediately noticed that Merrion Square Park had undergone some considerable changes from the last time I had seen it: it was filled with gazebos, tents, wee vans selling various types of food and coffee, and it even had a bar! The park was also constellated with colourful reclining chairs and brand-new wooden picnic tables.

The reclining chairs were sometimes arranged in pairs or groups of three to allow those who sat on them to chat in the sun; however, some people had pulled their reclining chair to the side and were peacefully reading by themselves, fully reclined. I immediately felt at home. My students picked a wooden table in one of the sunniest patches, right in front of the yellow tent where a DJ was going to start his performance in a matter of minutes.

Before the performance began, I ran to the wee coffee van, behind which stood three people whose faces would gradually become familiar to me in the following ten days. I ordered an almond cappuccino, and because I’m a creature of habit, I proceeded to order nothing but almond cappuccinos each time I decided to treat myself while at the festival.

✿

I should point out that my involvement with ILFD 2023 actually started approximately two weeks before the beginning of the festival itself when, on a stereotypically grey Dublin afternoon, I took refuge from the rain in the public library on Pearse Street. I was prepared to walk around the bookshelves for a while before encountering something that would capture my eye; instead it was there, on the most visually accessible shelf, a colourful booklet with a sea horse printed on it. Underneath the sea horse, it read:

International Literature Festival Dublin

19-28 May 2023

Merrion Square Park

At first, the booklet caught my eye due to its bright colours, as well as the intriguing combination of the words international-literarature-festival (wow!), but then it was the location on it that secured my gaze: Merrion Square Park.

I couldn’t believe it: a ten-day literary festival, right across from my workplace, starting two weeks from that very moment. Among the many events of the festival, the one which was most emphatically advertised by the library was an interview with the winner(s) of the prestigious 2023 Dublin Literary Award. Because the winner would not be announced until the day before the event, I decided that I would attempt to read all six finalists’ novels before that date, so that I would be able to attend the interview having already read the winning book. That’s when my journey started.

✿

Luckily, the Dublin library had ebook versions of all the finalists’ books on their website, so I began from the ones that were not currently on loan, and then worked my way down the list. I managed to read four of the six books before the event, and all of them were so beautiful and intense, that I found myself looking forward to my long, horrible commute to work just so I could keep reading them on the bus. Here are the four books I’ve read, in the order in which I’ve read read them:

Em, written by Kim Thúy and translated by Sheila Fischman

Paradais, written by Fernanda Melchor and translated by Sophie Hughes

Love Novel, written by Ivana Sajko and translated by Mima Simić

Cloud Cuckoo Land, written by Anthony Doerr

The two remaining shortlisted books that I didn’t have time to read before the event were the following:

Marzahn, Mon Amour, written by Katja Oskamp and translated by Jo Heinrich

The Trees, written by Percival Everett

Despite there being higher chances that the winner would be one of the books I had already read rather than one of the remaining two, it was Marzahn, Mon Amour which turned out to have been awarded the prestigious literary prize. I won’t lie: this outcome initially disappointed me, not because I had anything against the winning novel (which I hadn’t even read by that point), but because the four novels that I had read were all so captivatingly beautiful that I couldn’t believe the fact that none of them had won.

Still, I went to the event, which felt magical from the very first moment I set foot in the tent where it would take place. A young woman checked my ticket, smiled at me, and then said, “Please help yourself to a free copy of the winning novel, autographed by its author and its translator, respectively.”

I felt extremely confused and mumbled, “Wait, what do you mean free…? Are you sure…? I can just… take it?”

“Of course you can. There you go,” she said, handing a copy to me and one to the friend I was with.

I was shocked. Never in my life had I been given a beautiful brand-new book for free at an event whose entry ticket was also free. I looked at its cover: it was beautiful, and its colours reminded me of the ones of the Papers Publishing website. I reflected that this too had actually turned out perfectly for me: had the winner been one of the books I had already read, I would have received the free book after having read it; instead, now I could read this book for the first time on my beautiful physical copy.

When I did read Marzahn, Mon Amour, I was completely delighted: this novel is a collage of vignettes which each succeed in vividly painting a new, memorable character in very few pages. It’s hard to say whether I liked it more or less than its wonderful shortlisted rivals, but each of them was undeniably special. I would recommend to anyone who has enough time on their hands to go through this list and read all six books: I bet you won’t be disappointed!

✿

For the ten days of its duration, the festival constituted a peaceful oasis where I could go to decompress every day after work. At lunchtime there would always be a DJ, and I would sit and eat my lunch on one of the wonderful reclining chairs. After a few days I got comfortable enough to take off my shoes and socks and let my toes sink into the fresh grass as I read in the sun.

On top of the interview with the author and translator of Marzahn, Mon Amour, I attended many other events, including the launch of the Summer 2023 issue of The Stinging Fly, preceded by an interview with its editors and its founder. The Stinging Fly was celebrating its 25th anniversary on this occasion, which made the talk even more special, as its founder and editors recounted how the magazine had gotten started and then evolved over a quarter of a century.

The festival also gave me the chance to participate in a workshop on editing short fiction with editor So Mayer. During this two-hour workshop, we examined a short story called Wants, by Grace Paley, and then proceeded to apply what we had learned from it to a short story written by us that we had been asked to bring along. This exercise made me more aware of the way in which sentence structure, punctuation, and paragraphs can affect the pace of a story.

Another fantastic workshop I had the pleasure to attend was intriguingly called Try Your Hand at Translation. As a multilingual person who has always been interested in the process of books translation, I couldn’t miss it. In this workshop, award-winning translator Laura Watkinson gave us each a section of a children’s book that she had translated from Dutch. The section we were given was in Dutch, but we were also provided with a bad literary translation created through Google Translate. Our task was to improve the bad translation by recreating the rhythm and rhymes contained in the original Dutch. After reading our hopefully-improved translation, Laura would reveal how she had worded that section in her official English translation. Having twisted and turned the text in every possible way in the attempt to improve it, we felt immense relief when provided with Laura’s wonderful translation.

Finally, I attended two talks; one featuring writer Beata Umumbyeyi Mairesse and another by Douglas Stuart. Beata took us on an incredible journey covering multilingualism, racial identity, and knowledge transmission in families from the viewpoint of a Rwandan genocide survivor. She explained that the genocide is not ‘unspeakable’, as it has often been defined, but ‘unhearable’ instead. Her challenge as a writer was talking about a subject as violent and painful as a genocide in a way that people were comfortable hearing (or reading). Not only was her talk undeniably brilliant, but she also took the time, during the signing of her book All Your Children, Scattered, to talk at length with each one of her readers, as well as drawing beautiful illustration next to each one of her long and pondered dedications. I felt extremely lucky to be able to converse with this strikingly kind writer, and I am looking forward to reading her book.

The last talk I attended was also the very last event of the festival, during which Douglas Stuart discussed his latest novel, Young Mungo. In this book, similarly to his previous novel Shuggie Bain, where Douglas tells the story of a working class boy growing up in the East End of Glasgow in the early 1990s. His novel skillfully investigates themes such as alcoholism, poverty, motherhood, and queer love. Having lived in Glasgow for four years myself, I had already devoured both of Douglas’s novels and had even already attended a reading by Douglas last year; still, hearing him talk was no less inspiring, educational, and entertaining the second time aorund.

✿

With all this in mind, I would like to humbly dedicate this first installment of my Papers Publishing column to the International Literature Festival Dublin, which has made me feel hope in a time where this feeling is becoming less and less common. The literary community is unique insofar as it can compress itself to exist, communicate, and travel in the form of ink on bi-dimensional pieces of paper, or digital words on screen. However, that makes coming into contact with a slice of this community in person all the more special: it is a wonderful reminder that those words, those stories, those pages, are in fact people, who learned to turn their ideas into journeys made of ink and paper. To ILFD, and to the people behind the words, thank you.