Black Hole, Green Card: The Disappearance of Ireland

Fintan O'Toole is one of the most controversial and incisive commentators writing in ireland today. In Black Hole, Green Card, a hard-edged exploration of contemporary Irish life, O'Toole argues that there is no longer an Irish economy, just a Black Hole, through which profits and jobs vanish.

there is no longer an Irish nation, just a scattered people who still hold a country in their heads. There is no longer an Irish history, just a supermarket of reconstructed memories for tourist consumption. The Ireland invented by nationalists in the early years of this century has ceased to exist.

With the insight and vigour that characterises his work, O'Toole charts that disappearance and exposes the forces underlying this period of profound, and sometimes dizzying change. He explores the crisis of politics in a country whose rulers find it incomprehensible, and he identifies the elements of a new Irish identity being forged in the 1990s. Black Hole, Green Card builds into a major portrait of Irish life today.