We Don’t Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland by Fintan O’Toole

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“[L]ike reading a great tragicomic Irish novel.” ―James Wood, The New Yorker
“Masterful . . . astonishing.” ―Cullen Murphy, The Atlantic
“A landmark history . . . Leavened by the brilliance of O’Toole’s insights and wit.” ―Claire Messud, Harper’s

Winner • 2021 An Post Irish Book Award ― Nonfiction Book of the Year • from the judges: “The most remarkable Irish nonfiction book I’ve read in the last 10 years”; “[A] book for the ages.”

A celebrated Irish writer’s magisterial, brilliantly insightful chronicle of the wrenching transformations that dragged his homeland into the modern world.

Fintan O’Toole was born in the year the revolution began. It was 1958, and the Irish government―in despair, because all the young people were leaving―opened the country to foreign investment and popular culture. So began a decades-long, ongoing experiment with Irish national identity. In We Don’t Know Ourselves, O’Toole, one of the Anglophone world’s most consummate stylists, weaves his own experiences into Irish social, cultural, and economic change, showing how Ireland, in just one lifetime, has gone from a reactionary “backwater” to an almost totally open society―perhaps the most astonishing national transformation in modern history.