Liberties Press are delighted to announce our forthcoming new titles. In a new departure, we are was publishing our very first fiction titles. Not only that, but we are proud for those titles to be two of the great Irish novels that have been lost in the annals of time.

We are bringing back to life: Leland Bardwell's Girl on a Bicycle and Thomas Kilroy's The Big Chapel.

Girl on a Bicycle was Leland Bardwell's first novel and it introduced several of the themes that continue to resurface in Bardwell's subsequent writing. Dislocation, anti-authoritarian tendancies, sexual curiosity tempered by the stringencies of the day, and the confusion and castigation of the 'misfit' all merge in this coming-of-age novel. This book also serves to illuminate a society that is coming-of-age and is pushing against its own boundaries of independence, religion and new found national identity in a Europe torn apart by war. Booker prize-nominated author, Anthony Burgess has described it as 'a literary gem'.

Nominated for the Booker Prize upon its release in 1971, and winner of several awards, including the Guardian Fiction Prize and the Heinemann Prize, The Big Chapel is one of the great Irish novels. Part of the 'Liberties Revival' series, this novel depicts life in an Ireland ensconsed in clerical power, and still resonates with the Irish experience today. Basing his work upon a notorious clerical dispute in 19th century Ireland, Thomas Kilroy has written an anatomy of religious, dogmatic violence that remains strikingly relevant, in scenes that range from the private and reflective to the panorama of a whole community in convulsion, he draws upon a deep knowledge of the history and folklore of the time and place.

These titles will both be available in early July.