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This chapter examines how Frank McCourt’s Pulitzer-winning memoir, Angela’s Ashes, ironically recapitulates and inverts the narrative modes and aesthetic emphases of Irish late modernism in the context of Ireland’s short-lived “Celtic Tiger” boom at the end of the twentieth century. Though generally dismissed by scholars, Angela’s Ashes is shown to yield surprising insights about the Celtic Tiger mentality and the trajectory of Irish postcoloniality under the influence of globalization. The chapter argues that McCourt develops a postmodern naturalism that cynically de-materializes Irish postcolonial history and reveals how postcolonial narrative forms are increasingly overtaken by their representations of markets of all sorts. In this way, the chapter proposes, we can more clearly discern distinct phases of postcolonial culture and consider how different modernist and postmodernist modes signal postcoloniality’s gradual synchronization with the logic and modalities of global capitalism.

Katy Hayward argues that the dominant theme of “European stories” recounted in Ireland is always nationalism — official, moderate and progressive, but nationalism nevertheless. The Irish No‐votes of the first Treaty of Nice referenda in 2001 and the Treaty of Lisbon in 2008 may thus be seen not merely as consequences of the “Celtic Tiger” boom but also as signifiers of the need for a new conceptualisation of the relationship between “nation” and “Europe”. In the past, Hayward argues, this has been heavily premised on romantic nationalist notions of Celtic heritage and Ireland's “ancient connections” with Europe, as the country has strived to shake off its troubled colonial history. There is now an urgent need for a fresh vision of Ireland's place in the future European Union, requiring a depth and a boldness that can only be realised by a new wave of intellectual engagement in this debate.

This chapter outlines the rise of the Celtic Tiger when the Irish economy was transformed from a low- to a high-growth economy in the second half of the 1990s. Particular attention is paid to two international developments, the high tech revolution in California and the growing Europeanization of the Irish economy which enabled Ireland to move from a peripheral economy at the edge of Europe to one exploiting the gains arising from the rapprochement of two tectonic economic plates, those of Europe and the United States. The core of high-tech multinational investment created virtuous circles in the services sector, housing, and tax revenue buoyancy that enabled the Celtic Tiger to reach its apogee in 2000, reflected in an economic growth rate of 10%, a sizeable budget surplus, and a major decline in the debt/GDP ratio.

Arguing that return emigration and the figure of the returnee have proven central to discourses of Irish economic recovery, the coda puts Colm Tóibín’s Brooklyn (2009) in conversation with Kate Kerrigan’s Ellis Island (2009), situating both historical novels emphatically within the moment of their composition rather than those periods during which they are set (1950s and 1920s). It contends that they must be read in the context of wider Irish discourses of self-analysis that accompanied the collapse of the Celtic Tiger economy, discourses which troubled the historical construction of the Irish/U.S. transatlantic relationship in oppositional terms by suggesting that boom-time Ireland had, in fact, become the U.S. Emphasising both novels’ interest in forms of feminine self-fashioning, labour and enterprise that are evocative of the ways in which the Celtic Tiger was, itself, constructed as feminine, the coda argues that the novels deploy the motifs of emigration and return in order to explore and, to varying degrees, critique the neoliberal economic model celebrated during the boom years.

This chapter analyses the depiction of immigrants in Celtic Tiger and post-Celtic Tiger novels, revealing – like the previous chapters – the existence of diverse literary responses to multiethnicity in Ireland. The author identifies an evolution in the Irish novels published between 2000 and 2010. In those novels published in the initial years of the new millennium, such as those by Mary Rose Callaghan, Elizabeth Wassell, and Anne Haverty, immigrants appear in the background, as secondary characters coexisting – but not interacting actively – with the main Irish protagonists. It is not until a few years later, in the novels published by Chris Binchy, Peter Cunningham, and Hugo Hamilton, that immigrants acquire a voice of their own in the texts, and genuine interculturality between Irish-born and non-Irish born characters is presented as a possibility.

Eugene O'Brien argues that the cultural unconscious of the Celtic Tiger is to be found in the humorous narratives of Paul Howard and his fictional Celtic Tiger cub, Ross O'Carroll-Kelly. Freud has noted that ‘the realm of jokes has no boundaries’ and it is in humour that the repressed Lacanian ‘Real’ of the Celtic Tiger can be made to return. The satirical depiction of gross over-development of property, conspicuous consumption and illegal business deals captures what could be seen as the essence of this period far better than socio-economic or legal documentation, which are never able to access the lived, felt experience. This chapter traces the connections between the hilarious events of the stories and the actual parallel events of the Celtic Tiger, and makes the point that Ross is very much a synecdoche for the reality of this period, as when it is revealed that there is ‘a hundred grand missing’ from Ross and Sorcha‘s current account, it is Ross who says ‘I, er…well, I bought a couple of apartments. In Bulgaria’. Here the casual ease with which property, the ultimate commodity fetish of a certain class of people during this period, is bought, encapsulates, more than any government report, the ‘real’ of this time.

The purpose of this introduction is to provide a preliminary exploration of the terminology, issues, and questions which will later become central to the chapters that follow. A brief overview of the essays gathered in the collection is offered in the penultimate section

The traumatic experience of the last several years will reverberate throughout Irish society for many years to come. It is a complex story which has affected every Irish person, in one way or another. Although the main elements are by now well-known, the debate has too often been characterized by finger pointing and a hasty rush to judgment. It is hoped that this book may contribute to a balanced assessment of all the domestic and international forces — ideological, historical, and institutional — that help explain the fall of the Celtic Tiger, as well as indicating ways to avoid policy-making failures such as causes the economic and financial crash in 2008. A key part of the concluding chapter is therefore devoted to consideration of the lessons that may be learned from these traumatic events so as to prevent a repetition of other crises — from whatever source — in the future.

This chapter explores Irish science fiction of the 1980s, 1990s and the early twenty-first century, tracing a trajectory from dystopian narratives to optimism and experimentation, and back to dystopia. The 1980s recession provided the background for dystopian novels reflecting cold war paranoia, nuclear anxiety, violence engendered by transnational capitalism, and a new cynical attitude towards religion and politics. When the economy improved, this cynicism continued in Irish popular literature, though ‘Celtic Tiger’-era sf quickly became imitative of American genres, particularly of outdated cyberpunk - though these imitations were often tinged with mysticism. Science fiction was increasingly utilised to examine emerging issues, such as immigration, globalisation and Ireland’s increasing involvement in the EU, though few texts dared to predict an end to the country’s economic prosperity. When the Celtic Tiger died the mood of Irish sf once again turned dystopian, and this chapter considers how this resurgent dystopian turn manifests itself.

This chapter provides an analysis of Muslim immigration to Ireland after World War II, from the arrival of the first cohort of medical students from South Africa in 1945, who established the first communal structures for Muslims in Ireland, to the large-scale migration during the so-called Celtic Tiger Years (1995-2008), the period of Ireland’s rapid economic growth. The different patterns of migration are discussed and the various backgrounds of migrants investigated. The chapter illustrates how the Celtic Tiger years have changed the scope and type of Muslim immigration and settlement: from the mid-1990s, one can observe a major transformation of the Muslim population from small groups of middle- and upper-class professionals, most of whom immigrated for educational reasons, to migrant communities from diverse socio-economic and cultural backgrounds, including labour migrants, refugees and asylum seekers.

The chapter considers the novels and non-fiction of Anne Enright, winner of the Man Booker Prize in 2007 for The gathering. It traces the trajectory of her fiction towards a revamped version of Irish realism, with a focus on her most recent novel, The Green Road. It considers Enright’s evolving attitudes towards the nation and Irish literary traditions. The chapter discusses her memoir of motherhood and some of her other reflections on her development as a writer. It is argued that Enright belongs to a later moment than the other women considered here, as a person upon whom the burden of the Irish past appears to sit more lightly. Nevertheless, she engages with recognisably Irish themes such as emigration, child abuse, the Celtic Tiger boom/bust and rural life.

This chapter considers the extent to which the Returned Yank surfaces in narratives treating of land acquisition, distribution, ownership and development in Ireland in the second half of the twentieth century. It identifies two overlapping motifs in Returned Yank narratives that have been stated, restated and reworked in various historically-contingent ways from at least the 1930s, through the Lemassian turn, through the Celtic Tiger years: first, the extent to which the Returned Yank who returns to Ireland to buy property symbolises widespread ambivalence concerning the role of the post-independence Land Commission in Irish life; second, the degree to which narratives of land-purchasing (or ‘land-grabbing’) Returned Yanks become abstracted in the 1960s and beyond to the extent that s/he (usually he) comes to symbolise U.S. investment in Ireland more generally.

This chapter adds a case study of Ireland’s experience with FDI, as a complement to the cross-national investigations of preceding chapters. By considering a single country and its policies and institutions through time, this chapter adds context and policy relevance to the larger claims of the book. Ireland’s potential example for developing countries is considered, as well as its limitations. While Ireland has attracted a large amount of FDI since the 1990s, the country has not consistently exhibited innovation-intensive investment patterns. This chapter empirically examines the investment models adopted by firms in Ireland, and connects these strategies to the history of investment promotion and institutional development. This chapter demonstrates that institutions in Ireland did not until recently prioritize multinational embeddedness in the local economy, and that policymakers missed opportunities for innovation-intensive forms of investment. This chapter utilizes firm surveys, and also considers government support for innovation and domestic linkages. The chapter also contains a discussion of the possible implications of the Irish case.

In stark contrast to New Zealand’s market–conforming policies, Ireland pursued a tax policy of narrow bases and targeted incentives aimed at stimulating specific economic activities. Although successful in fueling economic growth, these policies contributed directly to the country’s economic meltdown at the end of the 2000s. This chapter links the policies adopted in Ireland to the country's generalist administrative system. The persistence of generalist, competition–based recruitment to the civil service effectively blocked the rise of economists within the Irish state. The marginal role of economic experts in Ireland’s finance bureaucracy not only meant that efficiency–oriented ideas about taxation lacked carriers but also that administrators lacked the analytical skills to resist the increasingly reckless tax policies pursued by politicians.

This chapter considers McGahern’s last novel, That They May Face the Rising Sun and selected stories, alongside the novels and stories of the handful of writers who, during the Celtic Tiger era and beyond, attempted to provide a mirror image of their multicultural society through the writing of foreign characters in their fictions. The chapter asks why these characters too often appear to have no history, heritage or sense of belonging to their own culture, thus failing to seriously engage the reader with the question of migration or detachment from one’s home. Comparison are made with McGahern, whose primary material was a closed monocultural community, inhabited by a handful of outsiders, local eccentrics and emigrants, yet who managed to convey deep understanding for the predicament of living elsewhere and for those who find themselves on this twofold journey, the both painful and privileged place of ‘in-between’.

The Introduction traces the formation of a Modern Irish Art by art historians and critics. The impact of the art market and collectors during the Celtic Tiger resulted in increased institutional and academic interest in the subject, while also provoking a critical reaction against the phenomenon. Modern Art was the subject of wide debate and controversy in Ireland from the 1920s and 1970s. It conveyed important and conflicting ideas about national identity to its admirers and provided access to a major manifestation of European culture. The lack of official institutional support by the Irish Free State meant that private individuals and interest groups had a key role in advocating Modern Art. Art was closely associated with colonialism, and the continuing influence of the London, and later New York, art world on Modern Irish Art, exacerbated the perception of it, by some, as provincial and elitist. The introduction finishes with an overview of the chapters and their contents.

A case study that underscores the dual political and artistic identity of Postcolonial Irish authors in action in order to delineate where Irish studies scholars stand with spectrality as a critical lens for analyzing the present and coming fiction about twenty-first-century Ireland. Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot (1949, trans. 1953) fluently theorizes this dual aesthetic and political identity, thereby bridging the high modernism of James Joyce and the postcolonial spectrality of Haunted Historiographies’ Post-Celtic Tiger authors.