The Empty Family

In the nine captivating stories that make up The Empty Family, Colm Toibin delineates with a tender and unique sensibility lives of unspoken or unconscious longing, of individuals, often willingly, cast adrift from their history. From the young Pakistani immigrant who seeks some kind of permanence in a strange town to the Irish woman reluctantly returning to Dublin and discovering a city that refuses to acknowledge her long absence, each of Toibin's stories manages to contain whole worlds: stories of fleeing the past and returning home, of family threads lost and ultimately regained.

Colm Toibin has twice been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for The Blackwater Lightship (1999) and The Master (2004). The Master won The International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2006. His most recent novel Brooklyn (2009), won the Costa Novel Award.