FOUR IRISH WRITERS have made the Booker Prize longlist for 2023, meaning that the country has now produced the most nominees in the history of the prize, relative to population size.
The novelists are amongst 12 that are up for the prestigious award, which has previously been won by famed Irish and Northern Irish writers including Anna Burns, Roddy Doyle, and John Banville.
The nominated works by Irish authors this year are How to Build a Boat, by Elaine Feeney, Old God’s Time, by Sebastian Barry, Prophet Song, by Paul Lynch, and The Bee Sting, by Paul Murray.
37 novels by Irish writers have now been nominated for the prize.
‘All 13 novels cast new light on what it means to exist in our time.’
— The Booker Prizes (@TheBookerPrizes) August 1, 2023
We are delighted to reveal the #BookerPrize2023 longlist. Huge congratulations to the authors who make up this year's Booker Dozen. 🎉
Find out more: https://t.co/0vTNpasvxq pic.twitter.com/PCAF1BDndC
The Booker judges read 163 books in seven months before cultivating the shortlist, which features works by authors from around the world in the English language.
Esi Edugyan – the Canadian Novelist who is chairing the judging panel – said that they were transported around the world through the novels, “to early 20th century Maine and Penang, to the vibrant streets of Lagos and the squash courts of London, to the blackest depths of the Atlantic, and into a dystopic Ireland where the terrifying loss of rights comes as a hard warning.”
Edugyan said the 2023 longlist of nominees is defined by the “irreverence of new voices”, and the “iconoclasm of established ones”.
“All 13 novels cast new light on what it means to exist in our time, and they do so in original and thrilling ways,” she added.
The judging panel, which also includes Adjoa Andoh, Mary Jean Chan, James Shapiro and Robert Webb, said that How to Build a Boat – Feeney’s coming-of-age tale about a teen boy and his relationship with a teacher at his school – explores the “restrictions of class and education in a small community”.
They further praised it as a “complex and genuinely moving novel”.
The Bee Sting, by Murray, tells the story of a family drama during the recession, in an unnamed Irish town.
The judging panel said that the novel is “at once hilarious and heartbreaking, personal and epic,” and labelled it an “addictive read”.
Prophet Song, by Lynch, is set in a dystopian Ireland, where democracy has fallen away. The Judges said that it makes for a “timely and unforgettable” read, and that Lynch has managed to capture the “social and political anxieties of our moment so compellingly”.
In Old God’s Time, the novel which has won Barry his fifth nomination – making him one of 10 writers to do so – we follow the story of a retired policeman who is forced to confront the loss and sorrow of his past through his involvement in a murder investigation.
As well as the four Irish writers who has made it onto the list, Martin Mcinnes from Scotland is nominated for his novel in Ascension, and Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ has become the fifth Nigerian novelist to be nominated with his novel A Spell of Good Things.
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