How Billy O'Callaghan's new book The Paper Man came to be set in Cork's Jewtown

In his most ambitious work to date, Cork author Billy O’Callaghan links a famous pre-war Austrian footballer to Cork’s own local Jewish history, writes Mike McGrath-Bryan

Author Billy O'Callaghan with his new book The Paper Man set in Cork's Jewtown. Picture Dan. Linehan

“It’s a funny one, because with every book, I never imagine that they’re ever going to come out, that they’re just there for me when the work is being done. To be honest, I don’t love this time of it, now, before it comes out,” says Billy O’Callaghan over the phone, with the gentle candour and honesty that informs a writing style that has endeared him to readers in Ireland and beyond.

O’Callaghan is speaking of The Paper Man, his newest novel, due for release in May via Penguin Random House in Ireland, and how, as a ‘finished’ piece of writing, the real work around it is only beginning.