As Joseph O'Connor returns with his highly anticipated new novel, My Father's House, we're delighted to present the next instalment in Hot Press' 'My Reading Of It' series. In the new video, premiering today at 1pm, O'Connor reads an intriguing chapter from the novel.

"In his illustrious and varied career, Joseph O’Connor has written plays, lyrics, non-fiction and short stories, but the novels are the reason his mantlepiece is overcrowded," Pat Carty writes in the current issue of Hot Press, which features an extensive interview with O'Connor. "Star Of The Sea, his marvellous 2002 famine story, has sold over a million copies and been translated into forty languages, and his more recent Shadowplay, which reimagined Bram Stoker’s London, took the Novel Of The Year gong at the Irish Book Awards. The readers of this magazine once saw fit to vote him Irish Novelist Of The Decade.

"His latest triumph – perhaps the first literary classic of 2023 – is My Father’s House, a brilliant recounting of Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty’s adventures in the Vatican during World War II, where the Kerry-born cleric provided, with the help of his choir of associates, an escape line for prisoners and the persecuted alike from Nazi clutches. It’s the kind of hold-my-calls story that armchairs were invented for and will doubtless have won an array of awards by year’s end."

Hot Press' 'My Reading Of It' series has previously featured some of Ireland's most renowned novelists, including Kevin Barry, Lisa McInerney, Jan Carson and Edel Coffey.

Watch Joseph O'Connor's contribution to our 'My Reading Of It' series below – premiering today at 1pm:

Read Pat Carty's in-depth interview with Joseph O'Connor in the current issue of Hot Press: