The third international IMPAC Dublin literary award, worth £100,000, was announced at the Mansion House in Dublin yesterday. The prize, one of the largest literary awards, is for a work of fiction in English or written in another language and published in translation.
A preliminary selection of 70 titles has already been made by the public libraries of cities throughout the world.
Nominations include the Irish authors Roddy Doyle (The Woman Who Walked Into Doors), Seamus Deane (Reading In The Dark), Edna O'Brien (Down By The River) and Ita Daly (Unholy Ghosts). Margaret Atwood, Doris Lessing, Margaret Forster, Anita Brookner, James Buchan, Milan Kundera and Carlos Fuentes are also among the selected authors.
On March 12th the judges will announce a shortlist of 10 titles and the winner will be announced on May 18th in Dublin. The nonvoting chairman of the judges is Prof Allen Weinstein, an American historian.
The panel of six judges also includes the Co Armagh poet Paul Muldoon, who now teaches creative writing at Princeton University. His book of poetry, New Selected Poems 1968-94, won the Irish Times 1997 poetry prize.
A Canadian poet, Greg Gatenby, is one of the judges along with the Mexican writer and critic Margo Glantz. Martha Tikkanen, a Finnish novelist and scriptwriter, and the poet and essayist Al Young complete the jury.