Forgotten Treasures: A Symposium

A book now almost forgotten, even in Ireland, is Heinrich Boll’s “Irish Journal” (“Irisches Tagebuch”), the German writer’s hilarious and heartwarming account of a visit to the country in the mid-1950s, when the Celtic Tiger looked more like a moth-eaten tabby. Boll recounts how, on the steamer across the Irish Sea, “the safety pin, that ancient Celtic clasp, had come into its own again,” which is just what one would hope for this sharp-witted little book. *