Thank you for visiting our site. Here you'll find a complete listing of Niall's works, including novels, non-fiction (with wife Christine Breen) and plays. We hope you enjoy your visit.

Keep up to date with all that’s happening in Kiltumper on View from Kiltumper Blog

Two new novels!
and Kiltumper Writing Workshops Continue…

John

In February, Bloomsbury USA, will publish John—a stunning, lyrical re-imagining of John the Apostle in the final years of his life. Now a frail, blind old man, John lives in exile on the desolate island of Patmos with a small group of his disciples. Together the group has endured their banishment, but after years awaiting Christ’s return, fissures form within their faith.

John is an ambitious and provocative re-imagining of the last surviving apostle and a powerful look at faith and how it lives and dies in the hearts of men.

Read Niall's notes on John on the View from Kiltumper Blog page.

Pre-publication Review from Kirkus Review…

“Irish novelist Williams takes spiritual issues seriously—and continues to write compellingly about them.”

John is also being published in the UK, Ireland, New Zealand, Australia, and Canada in September.

Boy and Man

Following the success of Boy in the World, Boy and Man will be published by HarperCollins UK in June of 2008. It continues the journey of the boy Jay as he volunteers in Ethiopia and leaves the world of adolescence behind. In keeping with the magic of Boy in the World and following in the tradition of Dickensian storytelling, Boy and Man, comes together like a masterful jigsaw.

Boy in the World

Reviews for Boy in the World (also coming out in a new paperback edition in the UK/Ireland in February.):

“A Dickens for the 21t Century…. With poetic prose that could have been written by angels, combined with a pace that keeps the reader turning the pages, Niall Williams’s gorgeous fifth novel… pulls together Dickensian plot twists, the philosophy of St Augustine and the collective trauma of 9/11 to create a convincing pilgrimage….”
- The Irish Times

“In the past, Williams’s writing has often displayed an old fashioned quality, wistfully creating characters and settings that owe more to the nostalgic than the contemporary. Boy in the World sets out in a similar vein but snaps firmly against this by introducing acts of terrorism and considering the consequences of violence. At time thoughtful and moving, ultimately it is the empathy the reader feels for the young boy which allows this fine novel to resonate so well.”
- John Boyne, author of the bestselling The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

“A likeable novel, which succeeds both as a sympathetic study of relationships and personal loss, and as a colourful… gripping story…”
- Times Literary Supplement

Workshops & Engagements

After successful writers’s workshops in Limerick, Kerry and Sligo, Niall is once again conducting a workshop in May, 2008 at The Listowel’s Writers’ Week and also in May in Kenmare he will give a one-day workshop. Three-day workshops in Kiltumper this coming summer are currently being organized. Niall has been invited to read from his recent work at the First International Writers Festival in Jerusalem in May, 2008.

Films

Development of Four Letters of Love as a motion picture continues with the New York film company, Wild Bear Films, and As it is in Heaven has been optioned by Augustine Films in San Francisco.