One Dublin One Book: Christine Falls Events
- Dublin’s 2026 One Dublin One Book programme put John Banville’s Christine Falls at the center of a month-long city reading campaign, with April events spanning author talks, screenings, workshops and library discussions. - The programme marked the novel’s 20th anniversary and tied Banville’s 1950s Dublin crime story to events on fashion, forensic science, Magdalene laundries, adoption and Quirke-themed city walks. - One Dublin One Book is a Dublin City Council initiative led by Dublin City Libraries and Dublin UNESCO City of Literature, following 2025’s Dublin Written in Our Hearts. (dublincity.ie)
Dublin chose John Banville’s Christine Falls as its 2026 One Dublin One Book title and built April’s citywide reading programme around the novel. (dublincity.ie) (dublincityofliterature.ie) The annual project asks people across Dublin to read one book connected to the city during April. This year’s choice is Banville’s 2006 crime novel, which follows pathologist Quirke through 1950s Dublin. (dublincity.ie) (dublincityofliterature.ie) Dublin City Libraries and Dublin UNESCO City of Literature lead the programme as a Dublin City Council initiative, with support from the Department of Culture, Communications and Sports. Dublin City Librarian Mairead Owens said the 2026 selection coincides with the book’s 20th anniversary. (dublincity.ie) The events were designed to pull Banville’s fiction into the city it describes. Organisers framed Christine Falls as a route into 1950s Dublin, from the morgue and the laundries to elite Catholic networks and family secrets. (dublincity.ie) (dublincityofliterature.ie) The programme included Banville in conversation with historian Donal Fallon about the city that shaped his work, and a separate Royal Irish Academy of Music event with Banville and novelist Belinda McKeon on Christine Falls two decades after publication. (eventbrite.ie 1) (eventbrite.ie 2) Other events widened the lens beyond the novel’s plot. Listings tied the book to talks on 1950s fashion, forensic science, women’s mistreatment, Magdalene laundries, illegal adoptions and Irish emigration to America. (eventbrite.ie) (independent.ie) (headtopics.com) There were also craft and participation events, including a crime-fiction workshop with Gill Perdue at Tallaght Library. Organisers said copies of the novel were available through public libraries, as an ebook and, during April, as an audiobook on BorrowBox. (eventbrite.ie) (dublincity.ie) Banville said he was pleased that Christine Falls, his “first” venture into crime fiction, had been chosen for the programme. The month-long format turned that single novel into a shared reading list and a map of Dublin’s cultural institutions. (dublincity.ie)
