I imagined lamplight, shadows, soft voices, clothes put away, the low sound of late news on the radio. And I thought as I crossed the bridge at Baggot Street to face the last stretch of my own journey home that no matter what I had done, I had not done that.' In the captivating stories that make up "The Empty Family", Colm Toibin delineates with a tender and unique sensibility lives of unspoken or unconscious longing, of individuals, often willingly, cast adrift from their history. From the young Pakistani immigrant who seeks some kind of permanence in a strange town to the Irish woman reluctantly returning to Dublin and discovering a city that refuses to acknowledge her long absence each of Toibin's stories manage to contain whole worlds: stories of fleeing the past and returning home, of family threads lost and ultimately regained.

科爾姆·托賓是具有國際聲譽的愛爾蘭當代著名作傢。他一九五五年生於愛爾蘭東南部一個積極投身愛爾蘭獨立運動的傢庭，畢業於都柏林大學，主修曆史和英文。

自一九九〇年發錶處女作小說《南方》以來，托賓已齣版六部長篇小說、兩部部短篇小說集、一部戲劇和多部遊記、散文集。《黑水燈塔船》、《大師》先後入圍布剋奬決選名單，後者榮獲IMPAC都柏林國際文學奬（2006）。《布魯剋林》獲二〇〇九年度英國科斯塔最佳小說奬。

托賓的作品主要描寫愛爾蘭社會、移居他鄉者的生活、個人身份與性取嚮的探索與堅持等。他文筆優雅恬淡，內斂含蓄，被譽為“英語文學中的語言大師”。

托賓先後在斯坦福大學、得剋薩斯大學、普林斯頓大學教授寫作。從二〇一一年九月開始，他接替馬丁•艾米斯，擔任曼徹斯特大學創意寫作教授。二〇一一年，英國《觀察傢報》將其選入“英國最重要的三百位知識分子”。目前，托賓擔任哥倫比亞大學英文與比較文學係梅隆講席教授。