Irish involvement with Africa is all too often seen though the work of missionaries, especially in Nigeria and Kenya. But this reissue of a book by the late Wicklow novelist Gerald Hanley, better known for The Year of the Lion and Gilligan’s Last Elephant, deals with a very different area and very different kind of…

Parnell Reconsidered, edited by Pauric Travers and Donal McCartney (UCD Press, €28.00 / £24.00)

Holy Bones and Holy Dust: How Relics Shape the History of Medieval Europe Heavenly Bodies: Cult Treasures & Spectacular Saints from the Catacombs

The World of Books The recent incident involving two fair-haired Roma children being taken into protection by the Garda has raised concerns about the arbitrary intervention of the State in some circumstances. It also revealed, which is of just as much concern, that folklore about Roma, or Romany, or Gypsies, is rife in Ireland. Merely changing the…

Gathered in My Name: Praying with St Matthew by Albert McNally (Shanaway Press, €14.00 / £12.00)

The South Circular Road Dublin on the eve of the First World War by Catherine Scuffil (Four Courts Press / Maynooth Studies in Local History, €8.95/£7.95) A Portrait of Dublin in Maps by Muiris de Buitléir (Gill & Macmillan, €29.99 / £26.99)

Consolations of the Forest: Alone in cabin in the middle Taiga, by Sylvain Tesson (Allen Lane, €18.99 / £16.99) Tóchar: Walking Ireland’s ancient pilgrim paths, by Darach MacDonald (New Island Books, €14.99 / £12.99)

The Archbishops, Bishops and Priests who served in the Archdiocese of Dublin in the Eighteenth Century, by J. Anthony Gaughan (Kingdom Books, €24.00/£22.00)

Looking Through the Cross

Reflections on Christian Spirituality by Karl Josef Waller