A Cold Eye : Notes from a Shared Island, 1989–2024

If the past is another country – what happens when we revisit it, one day a year?Carlo Gébler has done just that.

Here is the story of Ireland – from the tail end of the Troubles to the Good Friday agreement, to the glory days of the Celtic Tiger to the recession to Brexit and on to the present, where, it appears, everything we thought we could take for granted is no longer a given. Drawing from diaries he has kept for over four decades, Gébler stitches together days of his life into something bigger than his own lived experiences – a vivid patchwork history of the island over thirty-five years, capturing those vertiginous changes in sharp, funny, slantwise pieces that will prompt readers to reflect on the strange process by which we have arrived at the present. This intelligent and affectionate compilation, written in Gebler’s sparkling prose, is a joy.

Whether read from beginning to end or dipped into, it will appeal to anyone with even a passing interest in the astonishing evolution of our island.