Declan Kiberd

Kiberd is a leading scholar of Irish literature. His first book, Synge and the Irish Language (1979), reveals the importance of the Irish language to Synge's "international" anglophone works. Ties between English and Irish are also themes in his trilogy-Inventing Ireland (1996), Irish Classics (2001), and After Ireland (2018)-which tells the story of the rising and waning of a peripheral Irish modernity, distinctive in its value for experimentation. Probing established perspectives and opening public discussion, Kiberd finds commonalities across creedal and geographical lines in Ireland and India, sets Ulysses against the backdrop of the Easter Rising, and comments on Irish culture for The New York Times, The Times Literary Supplement , and the BBC.