Hodges Figgis

Ed, whose first novel Not Untrue & Not Unkind was long listed for last year’s Booker, is a regular customer at Ireland’s largest bookshop, Hodges Figgis, situated in the heart of Dublin. It was founded in the 18th century, is mentioned in passing in James Joyce's Ulysses, and stocks around 60,000 titles, specialising in Irish related titles, fiction, bargain books and academic titles. O’Loughlin fondly recalls going there both as a child and as a student, and notes that he is rarely able to leave without having bought something...


The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Bulgakov spent more than ten years working on this novel knowing that it could never be published (the full text was not published in Moscow until 33 years after the author's death). This is a truly subversive novel. It is a dazzling construction of three different stories, told in different tones, overlapping and intersecting each other to create a dense, sometimes bewildering, fantasy. To summarize the plot: in Judea Pontius Pilate is faced with interrogating a Jewish rabbi while in Moscow the Devil has arrived, accompanied by a large black cat who proves a poor shot with an automatic... A marvellous, magical book.
O’Loughlin adds: “it’s a very complex book in terms of the imagery that it uses, particularly the religious and historic imagery, nevertheless it’s a very good read and it’s very accessible and it is deeply moving. It’s a great love story, it’s a horror novel in parts, some parts are very, very scary, they’re very chilling and it’s often very, very funny so not only is it very clever, it has great emotional depth”