The longlist of titles for the 2023 Dublin Literary Award has just been announced – a handy aide-memoire if you’re stuck for reading material …
Novels by three Irish authors are among the 70 books nominated by libraries around the world for the 2023 Dublin Literary Award, which is sponsored by Dublin City Council. Now in its 28th year, this award is the world’s most valuable annual prize for a single work of fiction published in English, worth €100,000 to the winner.
Speaking at the launch of the longlist, patron of the award, Caroline Conroy, Lord Mayor of Dublin said, “This year’s Dublin Literary Award longlist is a fascinating chain of stories unifying readers across cultures and countries, more relevant now than ever before. I encourage you to drop into your local library to explore the list over the next few months, it not only rewards the reader but also has the power to transform you too.”
Nominations include 14 debut novels and 29 novels in translation, with works nominated from 31 countries across Africa, Europe, Asia, the US, Canada, South America, Australia, and New Zealand. Among the 29 translated books are novels originally published in Arabic, Bulgarian, Dutch, Hindi, Korean, Slovene, Icelandic and Japanese. (If the winning book has been translated, the author receives €75,000 and the translator receives €25,000).
The Irish titles nominated for the 2023 Award are: Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan, published by Faber Books, 56 Days by Catherine Ryan Howard, published by Corvus (Atlantic Books) and The Magician by Colm Tóibín, published by Penguin Random House.
The panel of judges who will select the shortlist and winner includes Gabriel Gbadamosi, an Irish and Nigerian poet, playwright and critic based in London; Paris-based writer Marie Hermet who teaches creative writing and translation at the Université Paris Cité; English writer Sarah Moss who is the author of eight novels and now teaches on the MA and MFA in creative writing at UCD; Doireann Ní Ghríofa who is a bilingual poet, essayist and translator from Co Clare; and Arunava Sinha who translates fiction, non-fiction and poetry from Bengali to English and from English to Bengali and has won several translation awards in India. The non-voting Chairperson is Professor Chris Morash, the Seamus Heaney Professor of Irish Writing at Trinity College Dublin.
Need to Know: The longlist of 70 titles can be viewed at www.dublinliteraryaward.ie.