Paul Murray and Michael Magee have won the inaugural Nero fiction awards, which have effectively replaced the long-running Costa book awards.
The Bee Sting, Murray’s tragicomic family saga set in post-crash rural Ireland, which had already won the Irish Novel and Book of the Year Awards and was on the 2023 Booker shortlist, won the Nero fiction award. The judges said: “The writing is both accomplished and highly readable, the characters shine, and the family members’ individual story arcs are all equally compelling and gripping.”
Close to Home, Magee’s strongly autobiographical novel about a young west Belfast Catholic struggling to navigate the post-conflict landscape, won the Nero debut fiction award. It has won the Rooney Prize for Irish Fiction and been shortlisted for the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize and Irish Newcomer of the Year Award and been longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize.
The judges said: “What sets this apart is the voice, which perfectly evokes a character and a community straining so hard against the systemic clamps of poverty, disillusionment and ennui that the effort crackles off the page.”
Murray said: “I am thrilled and honoured to have won the first-ever Nero Prize for Fiction. Thank you so much to the judges and to the sponsors for this wonderful recognition, you have made my day.”
Magee dedicated his award to the Palestinian writer, Ahmed Masoud. “Ahmed travelled to Dublin last month to take part in the Irish Writers for Palestine: Dublin fundraising event, at Vicar Street, and made a profound impression on everyone in the room that night with an incredible reading from his work.
“Twelve days ago, Ahmed’s brother, Khalid, was killed by the Israeli state in Gaza. He had gone missing, a drone bombed the area he was in, and he lost his leg and bled for three days before succumbing to his injuries. Tragically, Ahmed hasn’t been able to contact his mother and three other siblings in Gaza about the death of his brother due to the internet and communications blackout. Last he heard, his family were in Khan Younis, searching for safety, but were being heavily besieged by Israeli tanks. I hope his family are safe and well and that he can make contact with them soon.”
The Swifts by Beth Lincoln, illustrated by Claire Powell, won the children’s fiction prize. “Fast-paced, fiercely charismatic and brimming with challenge and heart, The Swifts is everything a book for young people should be,” the judges said.
Strong Female Character, a memoir by Scottish comedian and panellist on the TV show Taskmaster Fern Brady, won the nonfiction prize. The judges called it “a savagely funny, beautifully written and fearlessly honest book that is as inspiring as it is hilarious”.
One category winner will be selected by judges led by Booker Prize winner Bernardine Evaristo as the overall winner of the Nero Gold Prize, Book of the Year, to be announced on March 14th. Each category winner receives £5,000 (€5,870), with the overall Nero Gold Prize Book of the Year winner receiving an additional £30,000.
Evaristo said: “At a time when literature is under threat from the addictive distractions of social media and the internet, literary prizes not only celebrate individual writers and elevate careers, but draw attention to a beautiful art form that requires and rewards sustained concentration and engagement with words, other people’s lives and the imagination. The Nero Book Awards are a major new prize. I’m looking forward to chairing the Nero Gold Prize, and selecting a book from the category winners that offers readers exceptional riches, one which we judges think deserves to be honoured as the overall book of the year.”
Close to Home by Michael Magee has also been shortlisted for the 28th Christopher Ewart-Biggs Literary Prize, along with two television programmes, the final episode of Derry Girls, the Channel 4 series, and Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland, the five-part BBC2 TV series; a play, Agreement by Owen McCafferty; and two academic works, Uncivil War: the British Army and the Troubles, 1966-1975 (Cambridge University Press) by Huw Bennett and Getting to Good Friday: Literature and the Peace Process in Northern Ireland by Marilynn Richtarik (Oxford University Press).
Speaking for the judges, Prof Roy Foster said: “This year’s shortlist highlights various analyses of Northern Ireland’s recent past, from different genres.
“It includes a forensically detailed but intensely readable account of the British Army’s record during the early years of the Troubles, revealing much about the military mind and the strategic decisions whereby the army decided by 1975 that the conflict was unresolvable; the final episode of the legendary television series Derry Girls, movingly evoking the impact of the Good Friday Agreement; a sharp-edged novel delineating the world of a young man coping with a questionable future in the aftermath of community violence; a brilliantly accomplished play tracking the negotiations and personal conflicts which lay behind the Agreement; a major television series following the development of the Troubles through a variety of voices and testaments, many rarely heard; and a searching and original study of the interplay between creative literature and the political developments which climaxed with the Agreement.
“Overall, this powerful list presents works which define, in unexpected ways, the journey towards the Agreement reached just over a quarter of a century ago- reminding us not only of its considerable achievement, but the fragility of the structures on which it was based.”
The winner of the £7,500 prize, instituted in memory of the British ambassador to Ireland who was murdered by the IRA in 1976, will be announced on February 27th in the Irish Embassy, London.
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