![\"EL,](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/4991933_2_articleinline_Copy_20of_20EL_20FINAL_20.jpg\" "\\"EL,")
EL, by Thaddeus \u00d3 Buachalla, has been described as \u201ca brilliant fusion of scholarly detective work and speculative fiction\u201d<\/p>\nIrish language literature has long been rich in creativity and innovation.<\/p>\n
Some of the greatest writers and poets of the past century in this country worked exclusively in Irish.<\/p>\n
The language has seen a great resurgence of late, but while musicians and film-makers have been deservedly praised and recognised, novelists and poets often don\u2019t make the headlines.<\/p>\n
As such, many people in Ireland are unaware of the richness of Irish language literature today.<\/p>\n
Addressing this blind spot is largely what drove me on to publish my novel, EL, in translation, and perhaps to encourage people to seek out the original as well.<\/p>\n
I was very honoured that the book has been recognised with an An Post Irish Book Award and an Oireachtas Award, but also that, if you listen carefully to John Spillane\u2019s magnificent Irish language opera F\u00edoruisce: The Legend of the Lough, you will hear a reference to my fir\u00edn\u00ed from EL.<\/p>\n
\n EL is essentially a novel which examines the concept of truth in today\u2019s world.<\/p>\n
\n The advent of the internet has given us something that has never existed before – an endless supply of information at our fingertips, even carried around in our pockets wherever we go.\n <\/p>\n
This knowledge, however, rather than enlightening us, has often driven a wedge between us.<\/p>\n
With an abundance of information comes an abundance of ways to interpret it. Misinformation and conspiracy theories thrive in this environment.<\/p>\n
With EL, I sought to address this in a way that hadn\u2019t been done before.<\/p>\n
It is, at heart, a work of fantasy, though one that does not involve a single wizard or dragon.<\/p>\n
It operates in many ways like a conspiracy theory: piecing together facts that are true in order to make something that is not true seem plausible.<\/p>\n
Coincidences are golden in this realm of thought. Writing this novel involved an enormous amount of historical research, and I discovered that if you look for coincidences in history, you will find them everywhere.<\/p>\n
EL, by Thaddeus \u00d3 Buachalla, has been described as \u201ca brilliant fusion of scholarly detective work and speculative fiction\u201d<\/p>\n
The narrator, in fact, encourages the reader to take out their phones and check the validity of the story.<\/p>\n
Outside of the fantasy on which the story is built, I took great pains to stick to the historical truth as much as possible.<\/p>\n
I often say that everything in this book is true apart from the things that aren\u2019t true.<\/p>\n
The book contains two separate threads, and its chapters alternate. One is a contemporary story set in Cork city, where the protagonists try to untangle the bizarre world they have been dropped into with the discovery of an alternate species of microscopic humans living amongst us – the fir\u00edn\u00ed.<\/p>\n
The other thread is the historical story that they uncover, in which the great scientists of the day grapple with the same problem.<\/p>\n
\n The two stories create a spider\u2019s web of information in which multiple truths compete for the upper hand. At the same time, however, we are left with the bigger picture: how do we navigate this concept of truth in today\u2019s world?\n <\/p>\n
The historical strand of the novel brings us to 17th-century Holland, France, Italy, and England. We meet the great scientists of the day, and see the grand courts of the Medici, as well as the horrors of the plague and Great Fire of London.<\/p>\n
The contemporary strand of the story, however, is pure Cork city. These are the streets of Ballyphehane, where I grew up, alongside the city centre\u2019s bars, chippers, and shops, and I try to paint as vibrant a picture as I can of the magnificent place that shaped me.<\/p>\n
\n EL, by Thaddeus \u00d3 Buachalla, is published by Mercier Press, \u20ac19.99<\/p>\n
******<\/p>\n
Aside from being a writer, Thaddeus \u00d3 Buachalla is an Irish-language singer who performs a mix of traditional sean-n\u00f3s and spoken-word pieces.<\/p>\n
He has toured with his show Immram an Phr\u00e9ach\u00e1in, a long epic poem depicting a journey through Cork city at night.<\/p>\n
He is a current member of the eclectic West Cork group Pied Wagtail Collective, where he plays an array of instruments from the strings of oud, guitar and bouzouki to the brass of tuba and trumpet.<\/p>\n
He holds a PhD in Modern Irish from University College Cork and is the author of the critical study Cloch\u00e1in sa Scoilt on the postmodern novel in Irish literature.<\/p>\n
He is currently completing his second novel, Arrazalius n\u00f3 Cath\u00fa Antaine, a surreal work inspired by Hieronymus Bosch and set in the 15th-century Netherlands.<\/p>\n
Synopsis of EL\n <\/p>\n
A Cork academic\u2019s accidental discovery of microscopic humanoid beings living inside flies unleashes a four-century conspiracy that stretches from Galileo\u2019s revolutionary revelations to the chaos of Brexit.<\/p>\n
What begins as scientific curiosity becomes a mind-bending journey through hidden histories and manipulated truths.<\/p>\n
In our age of deepfakes and social media deception, EL asks the most urgent question of our time: who controls reality?<\/p>\n
Weaving between modern Ireland and 17th-century Europe, this award-winning thriller combines literary sophistication with pulse-pounding suspense, philosophical depth with page-turning momentum.<\/p>\n
Part academic mystery, part historical thriller, EL speaks directly to our post-truth moment \u2014 a world where AI reshapes narratives, disinformation spreads like wildfire, and the very nature of truth hangs in the balance.<\/p>\n
\n EL has been described as \u201ca brilliant fusion of scholarly detective work and speculative fiction that will leave you questioning the nature of reality itself\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Irish language literature has long been rich in creativity and innovation. Some of the greatest writers and poets…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":333990,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[288,93,61,60],"class_list":["post-333989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-books","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=333989"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333989\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/333990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=333989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=333989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=333989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}