Description

SHORTLISTED FOR THE IRISH BOOK AWARD FOR ‘NEWCOMER OF THE YEAR’

A young girl spends her days on a double-decker bus. A bride-to-be prays to St Valentine’s bones. Bouquets are found all over a museum. Teenagers gather to dissect a human body. Brimming with compassion and thrumming with energy, these stories are scrupulous in their attention to detail, epic in their scope. In this bravura debut collection, Liadan Ni Chuinn delivers a consummate blend of the personal and the political.

Publisher Review

Deserves to be considered among the best Irish books of the 21st century... This is a brilliant and remarkable book... Superb * Irish Times * The collection of the year was undoubtedly Every One Still Here from the young Northern Irish writer Liadan Ni Chuinn... These stories are fiercely political and confronting, but also hum with the mysteries of life. They mark the arrival of a phenomenal new talent -- 'Best Fiction of 2025' * Guardian * Astonishing... In precise, direct prose, the half a dozen stories anatomise a post-Good Friday agreement generation caught between the forward momentum of their lives and the backward pull of the past...Liadan Ni Chuinn is a writer to watch -- 'Books of the Year' * Observer * But the book of the year is Liadan Ni Chuinn's Every One Still Here: short stories of uncanny depth and astonishing richness about the Troubles, their aftermath, love, death, the ordinariness of days - everything -- 'Books of the Year' * Irish Times * The next big thing in books?... Astonishing... These six stories don't need any biographical scaffolding - they stand strong on their own. The writing here is stark, unflinching, bald. It feels genuinely new. I get the feeling that Ni Chuinn would hate the term "voice of a generation", but it may be foisted on them nonetheless - and with good reason * Sunday Times * Scrupulous, surprising and entirely gripping. The arrival of a stunning new voice * Guardian * Ireland's short story writers are in a class of their own, and every year new, exciting voices come to the fore. One of the most remarkable in 2025 is the mysterious Liadan Ni Chuinn... These are stories that have more than something to say - they resonate with an urgency for the reader to face history head-on * The Times * Reading Ni Chuinn's work, one thing quickly becomes clear: this is a phenomenal debut... This is heart-stopping writing, and I hope for more to come from the mysterious Ni Chuinn * Observer * An original, compassionate exploration of grief, faith, forgiveness, heritage and the foundations of shared humanity... Ni Chuinn's brilliance as a writer lies partly in their unexpected angles of approach... Dark or deadpan humour sits alongside insights of dazzling precision and poignancy * Times Literary Supplement * Utterly brilliant... A remarkable debut... Ni Chuinn heads into the heart of the characters' lives... in prose that is hypnotic and melodic * Daily Mail * For a publisher to agree to publish an anonymous author, as so many did Ferrante, and publishers in Ireland, the UK and the US have Ni Chuinn, that writer has to be extraordinary. And Ni Chuinn is -- Rhiannon Lucy Cosslet * Guardian * An exciting new voice on the literary scene... These are tales of intergenerational trauma, dislocation and isolation. Ni Chuinn's characters are varied, de-stabilised by events beyond their control, but still here, fully alive on the page... Outstanding... This is a stunning debut * Irish Independent * Everyone Still Here by the Irish writer Liadan Ni Chuinn is breathtaking. Rooted in the historical inheritances of the Northern Irish Troubles, the stories ask the short story to open, literally and formally, to mee the realities of people's lives -- Ali Smith Here's a writer who knows how to swerve gracefully from the expected. Her work is instinctive, intriguing and truly exciting. I cannot wait to see what's in store for her -- Lisa McInerney It's a long time since I've read a short story collection where I've felt such an aching tenderness for the people within its pages... These stories are rich. They have heart and weight. This is singular, controlled, dextrous writing from someone who is now one of my favourite writers -- Wendy Erskine A phenomenal collection - these stories have a poise, a precision, an anger, a melancholy, a way of skewering things, that is entirely Ni Chuinn's own. A formidable debut by an astonishing new voice -- Lucy Caldwell These are exceptional stories, stark yet richly textured and told in a voice that is at once plain-spoken and lyrical. Liadan Ni Chuinn is the real deal -- Louise Kennedy An extraordinary book by an extraordinary author who refuses to look the other way. Ni Chuinn's incantatory sentences quiver like seismographs, registering the quakes and ruptures that can crack a life in two -- Thomas Morris Liadan Ni Chuinn is a phenomenal writer, with such a striking, distinctive style. Surreal and yet vivid, wondrous and stark... It's like nothing else. Something new and startling is happening in this work. Fiction is being rejuvenated again. Anything seems possible -- Danny Denton These are exceptional stories - and necessary reading, rendering lives, connections, violence, and trauma in ways that are utterly transformative -- Neil Hegarty This book creates an integrated kaleidoscope - a contradiction of course - which each of these stories manages adroitly. The local dialect of History comes teeming slowly in, shocking us with its immutable presence. And here's a really important thing, I wanted to keep reading -- Evelyn Conlon Phenomenally good... Bristles with pain, compassion and controlled fury... Brilliant * Marie Claire * Beautiful...This is literary fiction at its best, and I would recommend Every One Still Here to anyone who wants to read something deeply human * Buzz Magazine * An intense collection, with tightly written stories ... and Faulknerian levels of generational trauma, passed down unendingly... An expansive collection * Mslexia *