Dublin writer Roddy Doyle, a former winner of the Booker prize for fiction, has won the €10,000 Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award for his novel Paula Spencer. The announcement was made last night at the opening of Listowel Writers' Week .
The novel, which focuses on the reflections of soon-to-be-48 Paula Spencer, cleaner, mother and recovering alcoholic, beat a shortlist that included the John Banville novel Christine Falls,written under the pseudonym Benjamin Black.
Other nominees were Pat McCabe for Winterwood; Claire Kilroy for Tenderwire;and Gerard Donovan for Julius Winsome. The judges were Carlo Gebler and Anne Enright.
Doyle, who was in Listowel to receive the award, said: "I am absolutely delighted. You can never get used to compliments. It's a lovely compliment."
The character Paula Spencer was one of the few characters he had created "who would not go away", he said. She had been with him for 16 years, appearing in the 1990s TV series Familyand in the novel, The Woman who Walked into Doors.
It was a challenge to create her and to write about a woman but there were other challenges with the novel including writing about alcoholism and domestic violence, Mr Doyle said in response to questions.
The next five days will see a packed programme of readings, theatre, workshops, art and film at Listowel. Literary figures attending include Melvyn Bragg, Mia Gallagher, Irvine Welsh, Andrew Motion, Pat McCabe, and Colm Tóibín, a regular participant in the Co Kerry festival.
A statue of the late John B Keane, writer, local publican one of the founders of the Listowel Writers' Week, by Doonbeg artist Séamus Connelly, will be unveiled this week. An exhibition will also look back on the festival's 37 years.
Officially opening the festival last night, novelist Joseph O'Connor said: "No literary festival in the world really compares with Listowel for its warmth of welcome, dazzling line-up of writers, wonderful events, late-night conversing and sense that the love of books is alive and well worth talking about with passion and excitement.
"Go anywhere you like in the wide world of literature but Listowel is unique and special."