2nd November 2009

TWO IRISH AUTHORS NOMINATED FOR THE 2010 INTERNATIONAL IMPAC DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD

Monday 2nd November 2009:

Novels by two Irish writers; The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry, winner of the 2009 Costa Prize and Netherland by Joseph O’Neill, longlisted for the 2009 Man Booker prize have been nominated for the prestigious 2010 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. 

Cllr. Emer Costello, Lord Mayor of Dublin announced today that 156 titles have been nominated for the €100,000 Award. It is the world’s most valuable annual literary prize for a single work of fiction published in English and is a Dublin City Council initiative, in partnership with IMPAC.  The nominations come from 163 libraries in 123 cities and 43 countries worldwide.

See the full longlist

Dublin City Council will announce the shortlist on 14th April 2010. The Lord Mayor will reveal the winning novel on 17th June 2010.

Other books among the 156 novels nominated include The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas, winner of the 2009 Commonwealth Writers Prize: Home by Marilynne Robinson, winner of the 2009 Orange Prize and The Armies by Evelio Rosero, winner of the 2009 Independent Prize for Fiction.

The nominated Irish titles are:
The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry, nominated by libraries in Ireland, the UK, the Czech Republic, South Africa and the USA.
Netherland by Joseph O’Neill, nominated by libraries in Ireland, Austria, South Africa and the USA.

Two writers from the North of Ireland were also nominated, David Park for The Truth Commissioner and Deirdre Madden for Molly Fox’s Birthday.

The 156 authors come from 46 countries.  The books span 18 languages, 41 of which are translated from languages such as Arabic, Chinese, Croatian, Icelandic, Serbian and Slovenian. 33 are first novels. “These are books that might not otherwise come to the attention of Irish readers”, says Deirdre Ellis-King, Dublin City Librarian.  “The spread of languages and the number of books in translation continues to grow”.  This year at 41 novels, we have the largest number of books in translation to date.”

Translated authors include Arnaldur Indridason, Andrei Makine, José Saramago, Ma Jian and Zoran Zivkovic.

Indian writer, Aravind Adiga is the libraries favorite with 9 nominations for The White Tiger,  A Mercy by Toni Morrison, The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway, The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery and The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry all received 8 nominations.

The 2010 Judging Panel

Anne Fine has written eight highly acclaimed novels for adults and is also one of Britain's most prestigious writers for children, having twice won both the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread Children's Book Award. Among her other prizes are the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, two Smarties awards, and many other regional and foreign prizes. In 2003 Anne became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. As Children's Laureate she set up www.myhomelibrary.org, offering free downloadable modern bookplates, and published three anthologies of classic and modern poetry for different age groups, called A Shame to Miss 1, 2 & 3. In 2003 she was awarded an OBE for her contribution to literature. Her work has been translated into thirty five languages. She has two daughters, and lives in County Durham. Her website is www.annefine.co.uk.

Anatoly (Anthony) Kudryavitsky was born in 1954 in Moscow of a Polish father and half-Irish mother. He lives in Co. Dublin and writes in both English and Russian. His novel titled The Case-Book of Inspector Mylls has been published by Zakharov Books (Moscow, Russia) in 2008. He has also published a novella, a number of short stories, seven books of his Russian poems and two collections of his English poems, as well as an anthology of contemporary Russian poetry in English translation. His poems and short stories have been translated into eleven languages. He was the recipient of a number of literary awards.

Eve Patten is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at Trinity College, Dublin, where she specialises in Irish writing and in the nineteenth and twentieth-century novel. She has published widely on contemporary British and Irish fiction and is a contributing author to the Cambridge Companion to the Irish Novel (2006). She regularly reviews new fiction for the Irish Times and is an essayist for the British Council's Contemporary Writers series (www.contemporarywriters.com). Her recent books include That Island Never Found (2007) and Literatures of War (2008), and she is author of a forthcoming study of the novelist Olivia Manning. She was awarded Fellowship of Trinity College in 2005, and lives in Dublin with her husband and two children.

Abdourahman Waberi is a major writer from the African nation of Djibouti. An essayist, novelist, teacher, poet and short story writer, Waberi is partially based in France and has been named one of the 50 Writers of the Future by the French literary mag Lire. Most of his works were originally published in French. His latest novel in English, In the United States of Africa [trans David and Nicole Ball, Nebraska Press], is a bold and fantastic vision of an Africa never before presented in literature. Passages Des Larmes, published in August 09, is both a thriller devoted to his beloved country endangered by Islamist Fundamentalists and a subtle homage to German Jew philosopher Walter Benjamin.
Waberi is currently teaching African literature at Claremont Mc Kenna College, California.

Zoë Wicomb is a South African writer. Her critical work focuses on South African writing and culture. Her fiction includes You Can't Get Lost in Cape Town, David's Story, Playing in the Light, short stories in various collections, and her latest novel, The One that Got Away. She is an Emeritus Professor at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow.

The Non-voting Chairperson

Hon. Eugene R. Sullivan, is a former Chief Judge of a US Court of Appeals and brings a wealth of experience from sixteen years on the bench. His first novel, The Majority Rules, was published in 2005.  His second novel of his political thriller trilogy, The Report to the Judiciary, was published in 2008. Judge Sullivan is currently a senior partner in Freeh Group International, a global consultant group of former judges based in Washington DC: Wilmington, Delaware; London and Rome.

Previous winners of the prestigious award include:
Man Gone Down by Michael Thomas (2009), De Niro’s Game by Rawi Hage (2008), Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson (2007), and The Master by Colm Tóibín (2006)

ENDS For further information: Press Office, Dublin City Council, 00353 1 222 2106

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