Irish Language
Pβdraig ╙ Siadhail's Na Seacht gCineβl Meisce agus finscΘalta eile (Cl≤ Iar-Chonnachta, £9.45) is his first collection of short stories - and has already netted him the prestigious Gradam Litr∅ochta for 2001 from Cl≤ Iar-Chonnachta. Derry-born but resident in Canada, where he lectures, for a number of years, ╙ Siadhail is better known as a novelist. In this imaginative work, which spans the Atlantic in theme and outlook, he has drawn from traditional Irish lore as well as contemporary Canada. The result is stories which deserve to be read.
A prose work from a different era, Alain-Fournier's novel, Le Grand Meaulnes, has been translated into Irish by Anra∅ Mac Giolla Chomhaill (CoiscΘim, £5). First published in 1912, it garnered great acclaim for the young author. With the outbreak of the first World War, he was unable to develop his talent. Tragically, Fournier was killed during one of the early engagements of that conflict. Autobiographical in its genesis, the novel is an evocative portrayal of a love lost.
Diarmuid Breathnach's Almanag ╔ireannach: Imleabhar 2 (An G·m, £6.50) is the perfect Christmas book. Like all almanacs, it is full of interesting titbits and information of the "I never knew that" variety. Among December's events down the years are, for example, the publication of God Save Ireland, a meeting in support of the Boers and the death of that fleet-footed hound, Master McGrath.
By P≤l ╙ Muir∅
Pop Fiction
New publisher, new price, new plot - Patricia Scanlan broke the mould with Francesca's Party (Bantam, £10.99 in UK), the story of a woman recovering from marriage breakdown and, said Kathy Cremin, her best book yet. Cathy Kelly turned to the London music scene and the beauty of the Kerry landscape for her fifth novel, What She Wants (HarperCollins, £9.99 in UK), while in Be Careful What You Wish For (HarperCollins, £5.99 in UK), Martina Devlin pondered the why, rather than the how, of falling in love.
Environment/Nature
Drop-dead gorgeous and chock-full of fascinating titbits? No, it's not the latest celebrity biog: it's The Blue Planet (BBC Books, £25 in UK), published to coincide with the awe-inspiring eight-part television series.
Not to be outdone in the looks department, Flora Hibernica by Jonathan Pilcher and Valerie Hall (Collins Press, £25) offers a handsome mix of photography and information on the plants and trees of Ireland. In a year when foot-and-mouth brought many farmers to the brink of disaster, Andrew O'Hagan's The End of British Farming (Profile Books, £5.99 in UK) asks whether food production is irretrievably in thrall to globalisation and the ever- increasing demands of supermarket chains.
But the book of the year in this category - in fact, Wallace's book of the year, bar none - has to be Hugh Brody's The Other Side of Eden: Hunter-Gatherers, Farmers and the Shaping of the World (Faber & Faber, £20 in UK), a stirring, dramatic, superbly-written study of the split between nomadic cultures and, well, the rest of us.
Irish Fiction
John McGahern's new novel, That They May Face the Rising Sun (Faber & Faber, £16.99), has arrived just in time for Christmas. It's been a long wait and this book will top many people's present list this year. Eoin McNamee's The Blue Tango (Faber & Faber, £10.99 ), an elegiac, beautifully-written reconstruction of a notorious Northern Ireland murder case which combines reportage and invention in a highly original way, had the critics arguing in the aisles about fact, fiction and the boundaries between them. Reviewer John Kenny also wondered about Ciaran Carson's Shamrock Tea (Granta, £14.99 in UK), "a giddy mix of autobiography, folklore, myth, tall tale, anecdote, scholarship". Jamie O'Neill's At Swim, Two Boys (Scribners, £17.99) represents "something rich and strange in Irish literature", said Declan Kiberd, while Willliam Wall's Minding Children (Sceptre, £16.99 in UK) dives inside the head of the childminder from hell. Seeds of Doubt by James Ryan (Weidenfeld & Nicholson, £12.99 in UK) is a sensitive study of a woman's attempt to get her life back on track after she gives up a child for adoption, while Philip Casey's The Fisher Child (Picador, £14.99 in UK) examines a family thrown into crisis by the birth of a baby. And taking up from his short story collection (Clocking Ninety on the Road to Cloughjordan) came a novel from a man who has a way with titles, Leo Cullen, Let's Twist Again (Blackstaff, £9.99 in UK).
This year also saw the fiction debut of Nuala O'Faolain. My Dream of You (Michael Joseph, £12.99) came out at the start of the year and, like a number of books mentioned on these pages, was recently published in paperback . Also entering the fiction stakes this year was Kevin Myers with Banks of Green Willow (Scribner Town House, £12.99) which Aisling Foster found "hauntingly relevant". Peter Cunningham's Love in One Edition came from Harvill at £9.99.
Dermot Bolger uses the thiller form as a springboard for a savage denunciation of political corruption and burgeoning racism in contemporary Ireland in The Valparaiso Voyage (Flamingo, £9.99 in UK), while in his collection of stories, Standard Time (Faber & Faber, £12.50 ), Keith Ridgway evokes a familiar yet mysterious Dublin, teeming with life, but full of secrets. On the satirical front, Hugh Leonard's dΘbut novel, A Wild People (Methuen, £15.99 in UK), does an elegant demolition job on the movers and shakers of Dublin's theatrical scene - and Arthur Mathews's spoof on conservative Catholicism, Well-Remembered Days (Macmillan, £9.99 in UK), was hailed by reviewer Terry Eagleton as "one of the funniest books to come out of Ireland since Flann O'Brien".
Northern ireland
Need a crash course on the conflict? You'll be spoiled for choice. Try Making Sense of the Troubles by David McKittrick and David McVea (Blackstaff Press, £20 in UK), a clear, concise, authoritative book and a dispassionate view of the past 30 years, according to reviewer Paul Arthur. The indefatigable McKittrick also co-wrote, with Eamon Mallie, a study of the peace process, Endgame in Ireland (Hodder & Stoughton, £12.99 in UK), while Paul Arthur studied the Anglo-Irish Agreement in Special Relationships (Blackstaff, £16.99 in UK).
Deaglβn de BrΘad·n's pacy The Far Side of Revenge (Collins Press, £15.99) retells recent events with the vividness and immediacy of a thriller - "highly recommended" said Maurice Manning - while Peter Taylor's Brits: The War against the IRA (Bloomsbury, £20 in UK) goes undercover to investigate British intelligence operations against the IRA.
Poetry
The must-have volume of the year has to be Seamus Heaney's luminous new collection, Electric Light (Faber & Faber, £14.99 in UK): "melody and blunt speech sit down at the same table", said reviewer Helen Vendler. The Taliban and Tipperary farmers do something similar in Paul Durcan's Cries of an Irish Caveman (Harvill Press, £14.99); and in a year which saw the publication of Collected Poems from two familiar though very different poetic voices, Thomas Kinsella (Carcanet, £14.95 in UK) and Michael Hartnett (Gallery Press, £13.95 hardback, £25 paperback), it's good to be reminded of a less familiar one. In Poems by Patrick McDonogh (Gallery Books, £8.95), Derek Mahon reintroduces the work of the unjustly neglected Dublin poet who was a contemporary of MacNeice and Kavanagh. On the international scene, two thought-provoking volumes from the Romanian poet Paul Celan offer a black, bleak view of the 20th century. Selected Poems and Prose of Paul Celan is published by Norton at £23 in UK and Fathomsuns and Benighted comes from Carcanet Press at £12.95 in UK.
The lifetime's work of the poet who once observed that "only poetry is optimistic in the 20th century", Czeslaw Milosz, was this year drawn together in New and Collected Poems 1931-2001 (Penguin, £10.99 in UK). One of the truly great European voices, the Nobel winner is testament, in this monumental volume, to the idea of poet as witness. The virtuosity of Australian poet Les Murray was demonstrated again in Learning Human: New Selected Poems (Carcanet, £7.95 in UK), while his less well-known (on this side of the world) fellow countryman, Robert Gray, displayed his mastery of crystalline language in Grass Script: Selected Earlier Poems, in which the poetry often draws on landscape for its vivid imagery, with the poet's love of oriental philosophy delicately worked into the fabric of many of the poems.
A selection of work by Dutch poet Rutger Kopland (translated by James Brockway) was published by Harvill Press (£10 in UK) in Memories of the Unknown. Kopland is one of The Netherlands's most highly regarded poets, and this is a beautifully crafted meditation on eternal and melancholy concerns.
Spiritual
Last but not - certainly not in terms of sales - least, the first year of the new millennium has seen the publication of unprecedented numbers of books that suggest ways of coping with a cruel, consumerist world. One of the best has to be The Glenstal Book of Prayer (Columba, £9.99), in which the "liturgy of the hours" is graced by a characteristically Benedictine mix of simplicity and class. Sister Stanislaus Kennedy's Gardening the Soul (Simon & Schuster/TownHouse, £10 in UK) draws on a diverse range of reading matter for her daily meditations, including the irrepressible Oscar Wilde: "He who would be free must not conform." To which every book-buyer would, surely, say a heartfelt amen.