“With Nine Folds Make a Paper Swan, Ruth Gilligan strikes out into ambitious literary territory. Gilligan weaves history into the present moment with assurance and style. Reminiscent of Tea Obreht, Nicole Krauss, and Maggie O’Farrell, Gilligan captures the pulse of one of Ireland’s untold stories, and asks us to consider the age-old dictum that the past is not dead, it is not even past. A wonderful new novel from a writer to look out for.” - Colum McCann

“Reading Ruth Gilligan’s Nine Folds Make a Paper Swan, I thought of Colum McCann’s Zoli—from which the book fittingly takes its epigraph—and of Nicole Krauss’s The History of Love; like those novels, it’s a rich and layered story of the complications, the mistakes, and the heartbreaks of which a human life is made. But I thought mostly about Gilligan’s characters—Ruth, Shem, and Aisling—and of the fascinating untold story—the story of Jews in twentieth-century Ireland--given vivid expression by their interweaving narratives. I haven’t read anything like it, and I was delighted to meet with their voices: voices that are so real—sometimes funny, sometimes frustrating, sometimes devastated—and that linger in the little streets imagined by the novel long after the story has been told.” - Belinda McKeon, author of TENDER

“The most famous literary Irishman of all time was a Jew, yet the stories of his community have been seldom told. Nine Folds Make a Paper Swan blooms in that silence, with grace, confidence, and vividness. I loved this beautifully written and elegantly managed novel and was sorry when it ended.” - Joseph O’Connor, author of THE THRILL OF IT ALL