It has been another good week on the awards front for Irish authors. Normal People by Sally Rooney and From A Low and Quiet Sea by Donal Ryan wereshortlisted for the Costa Novel Award, the most prestigious award for a novel open only to British and Irish authors.
Rooney and Ryan were also longlisted for this year’s Man Booker Prize, which was won by Belfast author Anna Burns for Milkman. All three have been shortlisted for Novel of the Year at next Tuesday’s An Post Irish Book Awards. Earlier this week, Rooney was named International Author of the Year at Britain’s Specsavers National Book Awards.
In tomorrow’s Irish Times books pages, Dublin Review editor Brendan Barrington examines the fiction/nonfiction binary which is under pressure from both sides of the divide, as a new breed of creative writers experiment with essay, reportage and memoir as interchangeable concepts.
Caoimhín de Barra, author of The Coming of the Celts: Celtic Nationalism in Ireland and Wales, contrasts Welsh and Irish experiences and expressions of national identity through language, culture and politics. We also publish the winning Hennessy New Irish Writing story and poems.
Reviews include Anne Harris on The Sunday Papers: A History of Ireland’s Weekly Press by Joe Breen and Mark O’Brien; Padraig Collins on Ned Kelly: Selectors, Squatters and Stock Thieves by Doug Morrissey; Vic Duggan on Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment by Francis Fukuyama; Eleanor Fitzsimons on Oscar: A Life by Matthew Sturgis; Julie Parsons on Couples by John Updike; David Hayden on Berta Isla by Javier Marias; John Self on Lucia Berlin; Niamh Purseil On Nano Nagle: The Life and the Legacy; Sarah Gilmartin on The Wooden Hill by Jamie Guiney; and Claire Hennessy on the best new YA fiction.
And if you buy The Irish Times this weekend in an Eason outlet, you can save €3 and buy Dead If You Don't by Peter James for €4.99.
