We Don't Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Ireland Since 1958

We Don't Know Ourselves is a personal vision of recent Irish history from 1958 to the present, by Fintan O Toole. It is a brilliant interweaving of memories and social and historical narrative, and is essential for anyone who wishes to understand modern Ireland.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 624 pages
Publication date: 01 September 2022
Publisher: Head of Zeus

The #1 Irish Times bestseller
Winner of the An Post Irish Book Awards
A clear-eyed, myth-dispelling masterpiece
Marian Keyes
Sweeping, authoritative, and profoundly intelligent
Colm Tóibín, Guardian
With the pace and twists of an enthralling novel
Irish Times
Evocative, moving, funny, and furious
Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times
An enthralling, panoramic book
Patrick Radden Keefe
A book that will remain important for a very long time
An Post Irish Book Award
We Don't Know Ourselves
is a very personal vision of recent Irish history from the year of O'Toole's birth, 1958, down to the present.
Ireland has changed almost out of recognition during those decades, and Fintan O'Toole's life coincides with that arc of transformation.
The book is a brilliant interweaving of memories (though this is emphatically not a memoir) and engrossing social and historical narrative.
This was the era of Eamon de Valera, Jack Lynch, Charles Haughey, and John Charles McQuaid, of sectarian civil war in the North, and the Pope's triumphant visit in 1979, but also of those who began to speak out against the ruling consensus – feminists, advocates for the rights of children, gay men, and women coming out of the shadows.
We Don't Know Ourselves
is an essential book for anyone who wishes to understand modern Ireland.

Weight: 458g
Dimension: 129 x 197 x 42 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781784978341