Brooklyn

Colm Toibin is one of the most prominent figures in contemporary Irish literature, a subtle and multifaceted writer whose books have been shortlisted for the Booker Prize multiple times and have won significant literary awards. For 'Brooklyn', a quiet story about a young woman and her quest for self-discovery, where emotions brew deep within and surface only as ripples, hints, and unfinished thoughts, the author received the Costa Prize, and in 2015, John Crowley adapted this novel with a screenplay co-written by Toibin and Nick Hornby. The heroine of 'Brooklyn', Eilis, in search of work and change of fortune, leaves her native Enniscorthy, where everything is so familiar and cozy, for the foreign and unfamiliar New York. There she struggles with nostalgia, searches for her place in a new country, meets love, makes difficult decisions, and is just settling in when sad family news calls her back to Ireland. At first glance, all immigrant stories seem similar, but they never replicate each other. 'Brooklyn' is a minor odyssey, where there are no special passions, but everything is permeated with feelings, piercing and relentless, the story of one young woman's journey there and back, from Enniscorthy to Brooklyn and back to Enniscorthy, in search of herself, her independence, her place, but ultimately her home, from which it is impossible to escape and where it is impossible to return.