An Irish voice echoes across cultures

Colm Toibin, one of the most celebrated and widely read writers in contemporary Irish literature, has made his fifth visit to China, embarking on a two-week book tour to five cities.

Toibin was in China to introduce his new novel Long Island, the Chinese translated edition, which was recently published by Archipel Press in collaboration with Shanghai Translation Publishing House.

Arriving on Sept 18, Toibin was at Shanghai's Theatre Young the following day, sharing a stage with Niao Niao, a well-known stand-up comedian, and Huang Yuning, deputy editor-in-chief of Shanghai Translation. They discussed the difficult homecoming for longtime exiles, the making of a writer, and the real differences between men and women.

He then traveled to Nanjing in Jiangsu province, Guangzhou in Guangdong province, Chengdu in Sichuan province, and to Beijing on Sept 27.

Born in Enniscorthy, Ireland, in 1955, Toibin published his first novel, The South, in 1990. Since then, he has published 11 novels, two collections of short stories, one collection of poetry and multiple dramas, travelogues and prose collections.

The Guardian listed Toibin as one of Britain's top 300 intellectuals, despite the fact that he is Irish. He is the recipient of the Irish PEN Award for Literature, the David Cohen Prize for Literature, and is an honorary foreign member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Peng Lun, founding director of Archipel Press, has been the main Chinese publisher and promoter of Toibin in China for more than 10 years. Archipel Press, in collaboration with Shanghai Translation, has published 10 books by Toibin in Chinese, with the latest being Long Island, a sequel to his 2009 novel Brooklyn.

Brooklyn was published in 2009 and tells the story of Eilis Lacey, a young Irish immigrant in the 1950s torn between her new home in New York and her old home in Enniscorthy. The international best-seller was adapted into a movie starring Saoirse Ronan in 2015.

Long Island, which came out in 2024, picks up Eilis' story 25 years later, when she decides to make her first trip back to Ireland in 20 years to escape the pressure of having to accept an illegitimate child about to be born from her husband's affair with a married woman.

However, Toibin never planned to write a sequel to Brooklyn. "I hate sequels," the author says in Shanghai. "I hope no one does any more sequels … and I am really sorry." But he says an idea emerged and drew him back to the story of Eilis.

Toibin's skillful portrayal of Eilis' experience as an exile straddling two cultures. Her painful return to Ireland after a long absence has strong resonance with Chinese readers, many of whom experienced migration from their hometowns before starting completely different lives in a rapidly developing urban China.

"Having experienced the challenges of living in Beijing and Shanghai, I fully understand the struggles of living in New York as an immigrant," Niao Niao says. Growing up in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, Niao Niao recalls its cold climate and local fondness in alcohol, and says she found strong resonance in Toibin's description of living conditions in hometown.

During a brief interview with China Daily in Shanghai, Toibin talked about his impression of Chinese readers: "There is a growing number of serious readers of fiction in China who will read books from any country as well as China. They are educated, curious.

"There is a sense that novels and books could inspire you or could be something that you would talk about if you were meeting with a friend, as much as people talk about movies," he added.

"I was meeting with a new generation of publishers, translators, editors, literary journalists, people who really live and eat books as their food, like books were necessary for their daily lives," Toibin said, recalling his experiences with his Chinese publisher Peng and Chinese readers over the years. "There are a great number of people whom I met 15 years ago. They were then 25 and are now 40. It was a great thing to see. A lot of people now are editors online, or doing various things still in the book business," he said.

Peng, his Chinese publisher, remembers Toibin's previous visits to China in 2009, 2011, 2012 and 2015. He helps plan Toibin's itinerary every time, leading to meetings with Chinese writers such as Wang Anyi and Su Tong.

As the Irish author became familiar with Chinese art and culture, he also fell in love with the ink paintings of Wu Guanzhong, and even wrote reviews for Shi Zhiying, a Shanghai-based contemporary artist.

David Murphy, consul general of Ireland in Shanghai, tells China Daily about Toibin's influence on contemporary Irish literature.

While Toibin has brilliantly told the stories of Irish family life, the experience of immigrants and the daily lives of people in Ireland, he also "champions the works of other Irish writers, helping to shape the conversation in Ireland and globally about what stories are important, the way we tell our stories, and who we tell them to".

Peng says that Toibin has recommended a number of writers to him, both Irish and from other countries. "He knows lots of writers, reads extensively, and writes literary reviews too."