'A chronicle for our times': Journalist Fintan O'Toole scoops Book of the Year award
Fintan O’Toole with the An Post Irish Book of the Year award yesterday which he won for ‘We Don’t Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Ireland since 1958’. Picture: Barry Cronin
A book by journalist Fintan O'Toole has received the top award at the An Post Irish Book Awards.
We Don’t Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Ireland since 1958 by O’Toole was named An Post Irish Book of the Year 2021 during a one-hour special television show hosted by Oliver Callan on RTÉ One on Wednesday night.
It was in the running with five other books that were category winners from the recent An Post Irish Book Awards: Your One Wild and Precious Life by Maureen Gaffney, A Hug For You by David King, illustrated by Rhiannon Archard, Aisling and the City by Emer McLysaght and Sarah Breen, Did Ye Hear Mammy Died? by Séamas O’Reilly and Beautiful World, Where Are You? by Sally Rooney. O’Toole’s book won the Odgers Berndtson Non-Fiction Book of the Year award last month.
Over 187,500 votes were cast by readers to select the winners in each category for last month's award ceremony and the public was also invited to vote for the overall An Post Irish Book of the Year.
We Don’t Know Ourselves is described as “a clear-eyed, myth-dispelling masterpiece that combines the personal with the political” and has been lauded as O’Toole’s finest work to date.
Maria Dickenson, chairperson of the judging panel, says We Don't Know Ourselves is "a book for the ages" and an important reflection of Ireland.
"In the opinion of the five-person judging panel, We Don't Know Ourselves is a book that will remain important for a very long time - a reflection of who we are and where we came from. Truly, this is a book for the ages," she says.
"Fintan O'Toole understands Ireland in a visceral way – it isn’t just politics, but culture and popular culture. He ‘gets’ all of Ireland and its turbulent history during his lifetime."
CEO of An Post, David Redmond, says it is the most remarkable book he has read in the last decade.
"I think it’s an astonishing book, fresh and passionate. Deeply moving but often funny and wry, a chronicle for our times. The most remarkable Irish non-fiction book I’ve read in the last 10 years," he says.
O'Toole describes the book as "pretty personal".
"To have a book that you hope speaks to people outside of a particular category, I suppose it’s trying to recognise something that maybe hits a chord more generally with Irish people with where Ireland is right now," he says.
"Also, unlike other books I’ve written in the past, this one is pretty personal – there’s quite a lot of ‘me’ in it, so it feels a bit more vulnerable and therefore you’re just a bit more grateful if people like it!"
Previous winners of the Irish Book of the Year award include Cork-based poet Doireann Ní Ghríofa, activist Vicky Phelan, and Irish Examiner columnist Louise O’Neill.
O'Toole has been a polemicist, literary editor, journalist and drama critic for The Irish Times since 1988 and his book A History of Ireland in 100 Objects won an Irish Book Award in 2013.
Born in Crumlin and educated at Coláiste Chaoimhín and University College Dublin, he now lives in America where he is a visiting lecturer in Irish Letters at Princeton University.
The An Post Book of the Year television programme is now available to watch back on the RTÉ Player.
