Following on that, Donoghue’s latest whodunnit novel, Frog Music (2014), inspired by historical events, encapsulates most of her literary concerns. More recent publications widened the author’s interests to include emigration, as it initially emerged in Landing (2007), the revision of the motherhood theme under appalling circumstances, which gave form to her literary hit Room (2010), and transnationalism, an issue that conferred cohesion to her collections of short stories, Touchy Subjects (2006) and Astray (2012). Troublemakers and misfits, on one side, or sophisticated eccentrics, on the other, informed the worlds of her historical trilogy composed of Slammerkin (2000), Life Masks (2004) and The Sealed Letter (2008).

From her lesbian romances Stir-Fry (1994) or Hood (1995), and her often provocative and subversive short story collections, to her academic and literary history books, Donoghue has developed an appeal for characters that stand outside the margins of society. The exploration of an array of discourses, both fictional and factual, which mainly gravitate around dislocation and displacement, informs many of her plots. Throughout her prolific and multifaceted career as a writer that has traversed literary genres and nationhoods, Irish-Canadian Emma Donoghue has kept re-inventing herself.

Frog music book