Citizens

Dublin 2010: Neil, twenty-six, unemployed, disaffected and disillusioned with Ireland, plans to emigrate and join his girlfriend in Canada. But having deferred his flight to attend his grandfather's funeral, he stays behind to aid his grieving grandmother.
Dublin 1916: Harry Colley is a Pathe Newsreel cameraman, recently back from London, with a Cinemachine and four newsreels ready to capture the events of Easter Week. This is his life's work: to chronicle the Irish struggle for independence and share it with the world. Neil accepts her grandmother's request to read her father's memoir. As he reads the reminiscences, he realizes that the newsreels spoken of in the text still exist. After viewing the reels, he sets off on a journey that will change his life, and the lives of all those around him, forever.
A timeless story of lost love and broken dreams that brilliantly counterpoints today's globalized generation with Ireland's nationalist revolutionaries of 1916, Citizens creates a conversation across a century in a unique novel that has echoes of Don DeLillo's Libra and Transatlantic by Colum McCann.

REVIEWS

Praise for Kevin Curran's debut novel Beatsploitation
'Brilliantly encapsulates the frustration felt by anyone who dreams of making art their livelihood.
Racial strife, juvenile delinquency, recession, professional and personal disaffection
and you have the ingredients for a simmering dramatic stew.' ―Irish Independent
'Beatsploitation is both an intriguing examination of twenty-something angst and a skilful,
nuanced portrait of contemporary Dublin.' ―Hot Press
'A powerful, original story showing how Ireland’s changing fortunes and race politics affected
a disillusioned generation.'―Irish Examiner
'An interesting take on A Clockwork Orange. It is rare to find an author ready to purloin Burgess’s
intuition that music and the future of the novel are linked, much less the talent to envisage
how that may be done.' ―The Irish Times
'An astonishing debut.'―TV3, Ireland AM Book of the Month
'This is a novel of Ireland's present moment dealing with real contemporary themes.' ―
Totally Dublin
'Beatsploitation [is] exactly the kind of oblique mirror-holding that good writers are needed
for – especially at times like these, when change can be too fast to process.' ―Sunday Independent


’s tricky writing to say the least, this business of connecting events from a century ago to today and I applaud Kevin Curran for coming onto the device of a memoir and film of the Rising to make it all united and true. Ireland being a young country has the remarkable advantage that many an ‘auld wan’ today still has memories of conversations with real people who fought for independence. But does anyone today care? Aye, there’s the rub and there’s the novel.

Citizens is important for people who think … it is not important. Canadians, Americans or Brits, Spaniards or Portuguese or Greeks, you may not at first see Ireland’s story as your story yet given that you all have birthed youth who are afraid, youth who are unfulfilled, youth who have doubts and fears; Citizens is your story too.
San Diego Book Review February 2016