LIBRARIES AROUND THE world have nominated their favourite books from 2012 for the IMPAC DUBLIN Literary Award – and three Irish books have made the longlist.
The IMPAC award is the world’s most valuable annual literary prize for a single work of fiction published in English – the prize totals €100k – and this year three Irish novels are among 152 titles that have been nominated by libraries worldwide
The nominations also include 51 American, 23 British, 11 Canadian novels and 41 novels in translation.
The award is organised by Dublin City Council, and the 2014 award was launched today by its patron, Lord Mayor of Dublin, Oisín Quinn.
The nominated Irish books are:
Margaret Hayes, Dublin City Librarian, said that the 152 books were nominated by libraries in 110 cities and 39 countries worldwide. Among them are 41 titles in translation, spanning 17 languages, and 47 are first novels.
Other novels nominated for the 2014 Award include Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel, winner of the 2012 Man Booker Prize and the Costa Prize; The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson , winner of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and The Round House by Louise Erdrich, winner of the 2012 National Book Award.
Among the 41 translated authors are Mario Vargas Llosa (Peruvian-Spanish writer and winner of the 2010 Nobel Prize for Literature); Karl Ove Knausgård (Norway), Herman Koch (The Netherlands) and Ragna Sigurðardóttir (Iceland).
Two previous winners of the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, 2010 winner Gerbrand Bakker and 1998 winner Herta Müller, have also been nominated. Herta Müller was also the recipient of the 2009 Nobel prize.
The most nominated books this year are Bring Up the Bodies by Mantel and Canada by Ford. Other books nominated by multiple libraries are The Dinner by Herman Koch, The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson, The Round House by Louise Erdrich and The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce.
Want to read the chosen books?
All the nominated novels are available for readers to borrow from Dublin’s public libraries, and you can see the full list on www.impacdublinaward.ie.
The winner will be announced on 12 June next year. Last year’s winner was an Irish author, Kevin Barry, so maybe 2014 will also see an Irish winner.
The 2014 Judging Panel comprises Irish author, Catherine Dunne; Malaysian novelist Tash Aw; Giles Foden, British novelist and Professor of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia; Maya Jaggi, award winning cultural journalist and critic for Guardian Review and Maciej Świerkocki, Polish translator, critic, scriptwriter, novelist and editor. The non-voting Chairperson is Eugene R Sullivan.
What English-language book from 2012 would you nominate for the award? Tell us in the comments.
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