INVENTING IRELAND is the most ambitious critical history of modernIrish literature to have been published for many years. DeclanKiberd argues that the Irish literary revival of the 1890-1922period embodied a spirit and a revolutionary, generous vision ofIrishness that is still relevant to post-colonial Ireland. Hedevelops his story through subtle and surprising readings of LadyGregory, Synge, O'Casey, Joyce, Beckett, Flann O'Brien, ElizabethBowen, Heaney, Friel and younger writers to Roddy Doyle.