I invited more than 60 experts (authors, critics, academics, booksellers and festival curators – their names are listed at the bottom) to submit their 50 favourite Irish novels or short story collections of the century so far.
We collated the results into a list of the 100 most broadly popular titles, ranked in descending order based on the number of nominations each received.
I then asked the panel to fine-tune the list by ranking reordering the titles from 1 to 100, to reflect their own personal preferences and thus to establish which books had inspired the deepest love.
On Thursday, we published numbers 100 to 51 and on Friday we revealed the books ranked 50 to 26. Here is the top 25 in reverse order.
- The 100 best Irish books of the 21st century: No 100 to No 51
- The 100 best Irish books of the 21st century: No 50 to No 26
25
Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann (2009)
In New York in 1974, Philippe Petit walks on a tightrope between the Twin Towers. Far below, the lives of complete strangers collide and are transformed, including a radical Irish monk working in the Bronx, a wealthy Manhattanite mourning her son; a drug-addled young artist; and a prostitute and her daughter. Winner of the National Book Award and the International Dublin Literary Award. Read our review here
24
Academy Street by Mary Costello (2014)
Tess grows up shy and introverted in the west of Ireland but comes into her own after emigrating to New York in the 1960s, carving out a life of courage and intensity, encountering ferocious love and calamitous loss. This debut won Irish Novel of the Year. Read our review here
23
City of Bohane by Kevin Barry (2012)
Kevin Barry’s debut novel conjures up an entire city with its own dialect, fashions and feuds. Logan Hartnett is the dapper godfather, but his old rival is back, henchmen are getting ambitious, his wife wants him to go straight and his mother is ancient but dangerous. Hugely entertaining, fantastic yet believable, with cracking dialogue and thrilling set pieces. Read our review here
22
The Bee Sting by Paul Murray (2023)
A natural storyteller, Paul Murray specialises, like Charles Dickens, in lengthy sagas that are mammoth in scope, generous with detail and backstory, flush with humour and colourful characters, all of it steeped in social realism. This hugely entertaining tragicomedy is the story of a midlands family whose comfortable existence is coming apart. It won Irish Book of the Year and the Nero Book Award. Read our review here
21
The Green Road by Anne Enright (2015)
Spanning the years 1980 and 2005, Anne Enright’s The Green Road unashamedly takes on the staples of the Irish novel – “the Mammy, the home place, the emotionally banjaxed siblings, the booze and the boom and the pill and the pope” – with what reviewer Belinda McKeon describes as “the unnervingly knowing prose that is, by now, her hallmark”. Read our review here
20
Star of the Sea by Joseph O’Connor (2002)
In 1847, the Star of the Sea sets sail for New York from famine-ravaged Ireland. On board are hundreds of refugees. Among them are a maidservant with a devastating secret, bankrupt Lord Merridith and his family, an aspiring novelist and a rebel balladeer. But a killer is stalking the decks, hungry for vengeance. A breakthrough work of historical fiction.
19
Normal People by Sally Rooney (2018)
“Normal People will be just as successful as it deserves to be: it is superb,” writes Anne Enright in her early review. It is the love story of Marianne and Connell, beautiful and brilliant but vulnerable, schoolfriends-with-benefits who shift from Sligo to Trinity College in Dublin. It is full of insight and sweetness, much wiser and more moral than one might expect, but Rooney’s mastery of tone is so complete, we almost fail to notice as the darkness trickles in. It won several awards and was a big bestseller. A TV adaptation was a huge lockdown hit. Read our review here
18
The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry (2008)
Roseanne McNulty, for more than half a century a patient in a Roscommon mental hospital, decides to write her autobiography, charting her life and that of her parents in Sligo at the turn of the 20th century. It won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, Costa Book of the Year and Irish Novel of the Year. Read our review here
17
The Master by Colm Tóibín (2004)
Nineteenth-century writer Henry James is heartbroken when his first play performs poorly in contrast to Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. He struggles with subsequent doubts about his sexual identity, his decision not to marry, and his difficulties with emotional intimacy. It won the International Dublin Literary Award among other prizes. Read our review here
16
Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell (2020)
The Derry-born writer’s luminous portrait of a marriage, at whose heart is the loss of a beloved child. A fictional account of William Shakespeare’s son, Hamnet, who died aged 11, it won the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Read our review here
15
Skippy Dies by Paul Murray (2010)
Skippy is 14-year-old Daniel Juster, nicknamed for his prominent teeth, one of many examples of teenage cruelty that give the book its dark, comic heart. The Booker Prize – longlisted novel set in a Dublin boarding school explores the lead-up to his death. The structure is like a planetary system with multiple characters and fascinating satellites. It sprawls without becoming slack.
14
A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing by Eimear McBride (2013)
A richly rewarding debut, if demanding in its at times traumatic subject matter and the fractured sentence structure of its troubled narrator’s preconsciousness. A young woman recounts, with astonishing insight and brutal detail, her life from the age of two to 20, her relationship with her brother, who has a brain tumour, and her abuse at the hands of an uncle. Winner of Irish Novel of the Year, the Goldsmiths Prize, Desmond Elliott Prize and Women’s Prize for Fiction. Adapted for the stage by Annie Ryan. Read our review here
13
Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín (2009)
Like many of her generation, Eilis Lacey must leave small-town 1950s Ireland for opportunity abroad but, just as she overcomes loneliness and alienation, and when love is on the horizon, duty calls her home and she must confront a terrible dilemma. Winner of the Costa Novel Award. Made into a John Crowley film starring Saoirse Ronan. Read our review here
12
Soldier Sailor by Claire Kilroy (2023)
A comeback novel that lays bare the delights and demands of new motherhood. Claire Kilroy’s nameless protagonist is an older first-time mother – some might say slave – to a cute, capricious toddler. A virtuosic set-piece about a late-night fever veers so far into nightmare territory, it feels as if we’re reading a thriller. Read our review here
11
Midwinter Break by Bernard MacLaverty (2017)
Long-married couple Stella and Gerry are on a four-day break in Amsterdam, they have been together a long time. She loves God and her hot water bottle; he loves whiskey. How do two human beings negotiate their love for each other, when they both love something else? A touching, hopeful portrait of love’s complexity, written by a master craftsman. “MacLaverty has always been a kind of high priest of the ordinary and the domestic,” writes Anne Enright. Read our review here
10
The Sea by John Banville (2005)
Having missed out on the 1989 Booker Prize with his shortlisted The Book of Evidence, John Banville won with this, his 14th novel, later made into a film starring Ciarán Hinds. Max Morden, an art historian whose wife’s death has shattered art’s illusions, returns to the seaside Irish village, where he spent his childhood holidays, to escape his recent loss and confront a distant trauma.
9
Room by Emma Donoghue (2010)
Drawing on the harrowing cases of Sabine Dardenne, Natascha Kampusch and Elisabeth Fritzl, many details are true but this is no semi-fictionalised wallow in the misery mire. Charming, funny, artfully constructed and almost unbearably moving, Emma Donoghue mines material that appears intractably bleak and surfaces with a powerful, compulsively readable novel that defies easy categorisation. Brie Larson won best actress Oscar for her role in Lenny Abrahamson’s 2015 film adaptation.
8
The Gathering by Anne Enright (2007)
Winner of the Booker Prize, this is a fresh, sophisticated take on the dysfunctional Irish family saga, a speciality of the author. After Liam Hegarty, an alcoholic, kills himself in England, his mother and surviving siblings gather in Dublin for his wake. What happened to him as a boy in his grandmother’s house? A witty, intelligent, observant and insightful account of inherited hurts.
7
The Spinning Heart by Donal Ryan (2012)
Another huge literary success that struggled to find a publisher. Set in a small Tipperary town in the aftermath of the Celtic Tiger’s collapse, each chapter is told from the perspective of a different character affected by the recession in a different way after a local property developer goes bust and flees the country. Read our review here
6
Trespasses by Louise Kennedy (2022)
A love story set against the backdrop of the Troubles. Cushla, a young Catholic teacher, falls for Michael, a married radical Protestant barrister, in the family pub where she helps out. Irish Novel of the Year and shortlisted for the Women’s Prize. It is being adapted for TV by Channel 4. Read our review here
5
Foster by Claire Keegan (2010)
“A great short story says more than a novel,” writes Eileen Battersby of Foster. “The genius of the finest short stories lies in what is left unsaid.” In 1981 a girl is sent to live with foster parents on a farm in Co Wexford while her mother gives birth. In the strangers’ house she encounters unfamiliar affection and slowly begins to blossom in their care. “A haunting, crafted narrative making superb use of the first-person voice and of an urgent present tense. It has beauty, harshness, menace and the spine of steel worthy of high art.” Colm Bairéad’s 2021 Irish-language adaptation An Cailín Ciúin was nominated for an Oscar. Read our review here
4
Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan (2021)
In the run-up to Christmas in New Ross, Co Wexford, 1985, Bill Furlong, a hard-working coal merchant, son of an unmarried mother and father of four girls, must choose between his conscience and his financial security when he discovers the local convent is exploiting and abusing the girls in its care. It was made into a film starring Cillian Murphy. Read our review here
3
Solar Bones by Mike McCormack (2016)
Marcus Conway, a recently deceased Mayo engineer, roams his empty house on All Souls’ Day, reflecting on his life: wife, family, work. Told in a single sentence, it is beautifully constructed, profound yet accessible, haunting and elegiac. A bit of a resurrection for the author too, having been dropped by his London publisher after poor sales. All credit to Irish publisher Tramp Press. Winner of the Dublin Literary Award, Goldsmiths Prize, and Irish Novel of the Year. A superb stage adaptation by Michael West won awards for actor Stanley Townsend and director Lynne Parker. Read our review here
2
That They May Face the Rising Sun by John McGahern (2002)
The Leitrim writer’s elegiac final novel, a portrait of a year in the life of a lakeside community, is a celebration and a meditation on rural life in his native county. “McGahern is reminding us all how to live before it is too late,” wrote Conor McCloskey. “In capturing this passing way of life he celebrates its rites and rituals with such dignity that the novel has many of the hallmarks of religious worship. But more important than the living world he celebrates is the natural world which surrounds it.” An Irish Novel of the Year. Pat Collins directed an acclaimed film adaptation in 2023.
1
Milkman by Anna Burns (2018)
The Booker Prize – winning novel is set in an unnamed city that is recognisably the author’s native Belfast. The 18-year-old protagonist, “middle sister”, lives in an enclave under the coercive control of a militant faction opposed to the repressive, discriminatory state, its groupthink-prone inhabitants doubly besieged and surveilled. The eponymous Milkman, a much older, predatory paramilitary, stalks her. She takes refuge in 19th-century literature, reading as she walks to navigate this hostile environment whose inhabitants are trapped by history, poverty and paranoia. Burns’s feisty, feminist narrative is circuitous rather than linear, its repetitiveness reflecting her characters’ entrapment, but it is surprisingly, surpassingly funny, with sly, sometimes absurdist humour. Read our review here
Additional reporting: Jessica Doyle
Panel of experts: Paul Howard, Clíodhna Ní Anluain, John Self, Fintan O’Toole, Cormac Kinsella, Eugene O’Brien, Claire Hennessy, Henrietta McKervey, Frank Shovlin, Julia Kelly, Peter Murphy, Martina Devlin, Colm Tóibín, Anne Enright, Michael Cronin, Julian Girdham, Eamon Maher, Lucy Sweeney Byrne, John Boyne, Neil Hegarty, Helen Cullen, Alex Clark, Val Nolan, Patricia Scanlan, Sarah Gilmartin, Diarmaid Ferriter, Niamh Donnelly, Bert Wright, Tomás Kenny, Fiona Reddan, Rónán Hession, Patricia Craig, Jessica Doyle, Vivienne Guinness, Emer McLysaght, Martin Doyle, Nadine O’Regan, Patrick Freyne, Róisín Ingle, Bernice Harrison, Peter O’Connell, Declan Burke, Eimear O’Herlihy, Eithne Shortall, Rosita Boland, Kevin Power, Sian Smyth, Caoilfhionn Fay, Colum McCann, Joseph O’Connor, Garrett Carr, Margaret Kelleher, Anne Griffin, Eilis Ní Dhuibhne, Sebastian Barry, Edel Coffey, Sinéad Mac Aodha, Susan Walsh, Hugh Linehan, Sinead McCorry, Rick O’Shea, Louisa Earls.
