Jabber-walk Walking tour with Dara Kavanagh (David Butler)

Described ‘as if Flann O’Brien had written Alice Through the Looking-glass’ and set in 1930’s Dublin and London, Jabberwock (Dedalus) tells of a dastardly republican plot to bring down the United Kingdom by the spreading of a counterfeit language. In a story in which language runs riot and fonts and footnotes proliferate alarmingly, the plot is finally thwarted not so much by the intervention of Chief Inspector Quibble of Semantics as by the bumbling investigations of down-at-heel journalist Ignatius Hackett.

Departing appropriately enough from The Printworks in Dublin Castle, this walk with author Dara Kavanagh (writer, poet and playwright David Butler) will take in some of the iconic sights – the GPO, the Palace Bar, Trinity College, the reading room of the National Library – through which Dublin journalist Ignatius Hackett plays his manxome cat-and-mouse game of pursuit with spies, informers and undercover police. Together with readings from the book, expect a generous mixture of history, topography, and local lore every bit as dubious as the footnotes and asides in which the novel glories.

David Butler is a Dublin novelist, poet and playwright. His third novel City of Dis (New Island) was shortlisted for the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year, 2015. Arlen House published his second story collection, Fugitive, in 2021, while his latest novel, Jabberwock, his second published under pen-name Dara Kavanagh, was brought out by Dedalus Books in 2023. He has published three poetry collections to date, the most recent being Blackrock Sequence (Doire Press, 2021). Literary awards include the Ted McNulty, Brendan Kennelly, Féile Filíochta and Poetry Ireland / Trócaire for poetry; and the Maria Edgeworth (twice), Benedict Kiely, Colm Tóibín, ChipLit Fest and Fish International for the short story. He lives in Bray with wife and fellow author Tanya Farrelly.