Novelist Oisín Fagan: ‘I was at the altar of literature and had its fire in me'

The Guardian

05-04-2025

Oisín Fagan, 33, grew up in County Meath and lives in Dublin. In 2020 he was shortlisted for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse comic fiction prize with his first novel, Nobber, about the Black Death's arrival in the Irish village that gives the book its title. His other books include the 2016 story collection Hostages, described by the Spectator as 'DayGlo-Breugelish nightmares'; Ferdia Lennon calls him 'one of the most strikingly original Irish writers working today'. His new novel, Eden's Shore, is a violent seafaring epic centred on a Spanish colony in Latin America at the end of the 18th century.How did this book begin for you?
It's a confluence of things I've been interested in all my life: Latin American literature, history, revolutionary politics, spirituality. Like Nobber, it's about a dying town with a proliferation of characters, which I like. That's not new – it's Balzac, it's Dickens – but for some reason we've distilled novels down to chamber pieces of six or seven characters; to me, that's theatre, which I also love, but novels can proliferate horizontally in a way that other forms can't.What draws you to set your novels in the past?
You can do things with language and form that might not be as accepted in contemporary work, but I don't see myself as a historical novelist. Literary fiction seems quite contemporary at the moment; historical fiction seems to be slipping into 'genre', like fantasy. In other parts of the world, it's just part of literary fiction. We're living through a moment in Irish literature with a lot of very good Irish writers who are all very different and talented, but maybe they're not experimenting in genre as much as they would do elsewhere in the world. Because I find myself an Irishman among these people, you're like, 'Oh, he's different.' In the 1960s in America, or Latin America in the 50s and 70s, you'd be like, 'Oh, he's just one of the lads.'
There are some pretty grisly scenes here. What were they like to write?
The nuts and bolts of novel formation are difficult for me – setting up a scene, getting from one place to another – but give me someone picking bullets out of someone's gut and I think: here we fucking go. I'm writing for these moments where the body becomes real. Like, the eyeball scene... you should've seen the 300 words that were deleted; you'd have been seeing it for the rest of your life. I love my cousin to bits, but he had this fear of eyes as a child; mention the word 'eye' and you'd see him kind of flinch. I tapped into that.
Is that what lights you up as a reader?
Six or seven years ago I read a lot of body horror. I can't any more – I get scared! Now I read Robert Aickman, who's more about what you don't see; that's a muscle I'd like to develop. But my reading has no rhyme or reason. I'll read detective literature for three months, then Greek tragedy for three months. It doesn't have to be ribs getting cracked open and child murder; the last time I was utterly astounded was by Marcel Schwob, who does these page-long imaginary lives of famous people through history. You're gasping on every page.Did you always want to write?
In my teens and 20s, there was nothing else. I was at the altar of literature and had its fire in me because I knew its effects: the Yeats poems I read when I was 13 or 14 are who I am. That fire has carried me for 15 years, but I basically have to find a new way to work or I'll fucking die. And I won't have lived, you know? Because the fact is, literature is not life, and I've lived my entire life book-first. I've been trying to balance the scales, but the lasting power of literature [for a reader] is that it's so big; if I'm lucky enough to get to 50, 60, 70, I know there's the right novel, the right poem, waiting for me.Tell us what you read growing up.
I learned to read later than my peers. I remember thinking: what are they doing? My mother did extra work with me after school and brought up my reading age. I always thought of books as a way of being brave. To read adventurously, to read more – I identified that with going forward, being bigger. I remember reading Calvin and Hobbes, laughing so much I couldn't breathe, people knocking on the door to say I had to go to sleep. When I was eight or nine I read a book about a dog – it had 100 pages. I remember getting to the end: 100 pages! I couldn't even count that high. As a teenager I read fantasy. Growing up in rural Ireland, I'd see an oak tree on a hill and think: my God, this is Robin Hobb, JRR Tolkien, Ursula K Le Guin. It gives you back these parts of your life and allows you to recognise them as magical. Then at 14, I was like: time to read Ulysses! At that age you're always reading above your capabilities. Dostoevsky might resonate deeply, but you fundamentally don't know what's happening. You read Notes from Underground thinking: 'Yes, he's totally right! Finally someone understands!' Then you reread it: 'Oh, this is a comedy?'Name a novel you've enjoyed recently.
I'd nearly finished Eden's Shore and was wondering: am I going too far? Then I reread Gravity's Rainbow [by Thomas Pynchon] and thought I absolutely hadn't gone far enough: I'm stuck in the shallows and this guy's swimming in the ocean. Sometimes a book makes you slow down and offer yourself to it, like the Bible. That devotional quality is what I want; the more you give, the more comes back.
Why did you dedicate Eden's Shore to 'el capitán, Ronaldo'?
It's not the footballer! It's my Argentinian dad. It's an affectionate in-joke. He's my connection to Latin America. Maradona's the only footballer I'd dedicate it to; Portuguese Ronaldo's not getting anything out of me. Maybe Roy Keane, one day.
Eden's Shore is published on 10 April by John Murray (£16.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply