Åke Persson is Senior Lecturer in English at University West, Trollhättan, Sweden. A graduate of Karlstad University and Trinity College, Dublin, he was awarded his Ph. D. at Gothenburg University. He is the author of Betraying the Age: Social and Artistic Protest in Brendan Kennelly’s Work (Gothenburg 2000), and edited Kennelly’s critical essays, Journey into Joy: Selected Prose (Bloodaxe,1994), as well as a collection of essays on Kennelly, This Fellow with the Fabulous Smile (Bloodaxe 1996). He has published extensively on Anglo-Irish literature and is currently engaged in research on contemporary Irish fiction as well as film adaptations of literary texts.