Catastrophe: Nakba II brings the decades-long plight of the Palestinian people into focus at the Dublin Book Festival. 

The Dublin Book Festival is in partnership with Green Foundation Ireland and TU Dublin. 

Attending gives students and the general public a chance to hear authors in discussion, ask questions, and engage with current debates. 

DBF 2025 runs from 5 – 9 November across venues in Dublin, featuring over 100 events including: author talks, panel discussions, workshops, walking tours, and launches. 

On Wednesday 5 November, hosted at TU Dublin, Grangegorman, Irish journalist-turned-author Fintan Drury will present his latest work. 

He explains his inspiration for the book.,  

“My main inspiration was my mother who died 20 years ago. She was a devout Catholic and proud Irishwoman who believed both the Vatican and the Irish government had not done nearly enough for the Jewish people during the Holocaust,” said Drury. .   

“She used to say, ‘at least nothing like that could happen again’. It has. I can research, write and talk so as I’m an old fella with grandchildren I thought I should look at what was happening to the Palestinians.” 

Drury was a news and current affairs journalist with RTE in the 1980s. He was a correspondent in Northern Ireland and did overseas reporting before presenting Morning Ireland for over two years. 

He left RTE at 30 and worked in business until 2015, establishing his own communications consultancy and Ireland’s first full-service sports management business, with both companies continuing to trade today.  

He has a longstanding interest in human rights and migration – in his twenties he took a six-month sabbatical from RTE to work with GOAL in Sudan.  

When he returned to journalism and to writing in 2016 it was after spending time working in a refugee camp in Greece at the height of the Syrian war. He wrote a 15-part series on an individual Syrian refugee’s story in the Irish Times. 

 Since then, he’s been a regular opinion and feature writer on migration and gambling addiction in the media in Ireland and sometimes in the UK. 

His research for the book consisted of a “huge amount of reading”, followed by trips to Lebanon, Jordan and the West Bank as well as carrying out interviews in places in Europe, UK and Ireland too. 

Drury explained the publishing process., “It wasn’t difficult as I was known for opinion writing and I’d published another book (about my time in business) so I knew my way around, I’ve a great agent in Louise Dobbin of Repforce and Merrion Press is an outstanding publishing company which is known for its independence and courage.” 

What he would like readers to take away from the book is, “First, better understand this genocide has nothing to do with October 7^th, 2023. Two, Israel is not a democracy; it’s an apartheid, settler colonial state that wants to destroy any prospect of a state of Palestine.”  

Reviewers have described the book as “Urgent and thought- provoking” and “Well researched, organised and deeply affective”. 

Catastrophe: Nakba II has been received extremely well by the Irish audience and greater public and has been shortlisted for non-fiction book of the year which Drury considers to be an honour. 

In today’s media landscape, where narratives around Israel and Palestine can often be simplified or polarised, Drury’s book aims to provide a deeper historical and journalistic context.