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Life
| b. Kildare town; worked at first in Black & Decker factory; joined the Irish Army; saw service as a former military policeman in the Lebanon; several times winner of the Fish Award; winner [of] Birdport, 1998; winner of Francis MacManus Award with a story about working at Lidl, 1998; contrib. to Clem Cairns, From the Bering Strait and Other Stories: Winners of Ireland’s Fish Short Story Prize (Fish 1999); issued Us (2001), the story of a dysfunctional family in the Curragh, winner of Sunday Independent John B. Keane Literary Award; issued After Kafra (Poolbeg q.d.), a novel about post-traumatic stress; |
| issued The Broken Cedar (Scribner 2002), a novel about a liberal Muslim and the 15-year old secret of the brutal murder of an Irish soldier. shortlisted for the 2005 Impac Award; ; issued The Silence of the Glasshouse (New Island 2008), a novel about the Free-State execution of seven IRA men following the murder of a British officer, purportedly on the back of Michael Collin's undertaking to Churchill; also Lebanon Diaries (Maverick), non-fiction; plays incl. Song of the Small Bird, winner of P. J. O’Connor Award, and Rosanna Night Walker, both about the “wrens” of the Curragh; latterly enrolled for TCD MPhil in Creative Writing; first collection of short-stories pending in 2009. |
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Criticism
John Kenny, review of Martin Malone, The Broken Cedar (Scribner), in The Irish Times (18 Jan. 2002), “Weekend”; [Shirley Kelly,] ‘Uncivil War’, interview-article in Books Ireland (Oct. 2008), pp.213-24.
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Notes
The Silence of the Glasshouse (2008), a novel about the Free-State execution of seven IRA men following the murder of a British officer at the Curragh named John Wogan Browne, and told through the eyes of Chalky White, who is just eighteen when he is arrested with six others for possession of arms. The novel is subsequently told through the eyes of his feisty mother Breege who is forbidden to visit him in the glasshouse and later is refused the return of his body; also focuses on the sadistic executioner Captain Kearney who begins life by strangling a puppy. (See Sue Leonard, review, in Books Ireland, Oct. 2008, p.223.)