13 novels longlisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize
The longlist was selected by the 2021 judging panel consisting of: cultural historian and novelist, Lucy Hughes-Hallett (chair); journalist and writer, Aida Edemariam; Man Booker shortlisted novelist, Neel Mukherjee; Professor of the History of Slavery, Olivette Otele; and poet, translator and biographer, George Szirtes.
2020 International DUBLIN Literary Award Longlist Announced
Eight novels from Ireland are among 156 books nominated by libraries around the world for the 2020 International DUBLIN Literary Award. With the winner receiving €100,000, the Award is the world’s most valuable annual prize for a single work of fiction published in English.
The shortlist for the An Post Irish Book Awards 2019, features a diverse mix of exceptional writing from new and established writers across sixteen categories, including Novel of the Year, Children’s, Cookery, Crime Fiction, Popular Fiction, Nonfiction, Sports, Short Story, Poetry, Teen and Young Adult and Irish Language. Shortlisted writers include Kevin Barry, Edna O’Brien, Joseph O’Connor, Cecelia Ahern, Emma Dabiri, Fintan O’Toole, Samantha Power, Emer McLysaght and Sarah Breen, Jamie Heaslip, Andrea Corr, Vicky Phelan, Diarmaid Ferriter, Sinéad Gleeson, Mary Costello, Rosita Boland, Joe Duffy and Freya McClements.The An Post Irish Book Awards 2019 Shortlist is as follows (with links to our catalogue):Eason Novel of the YearNight Boat to Tangier – Kevin Barry (Canongate Books)Girl – Edna O’Brien (Faber & Faber)Shadowplay – Joseph O’Connor (Harvill Secker)This is Happiness – Niall Williams (Bloomsbury Publishing)The Narrow Land – Christine Dwyer Hickey (Atlantic Books)The River Capture – Mary Costello (Canongate Books)National Book Tokens Popular Fiction Book of the YearOnce, Twice, Three Times an Aisling – Emer McLysaght and Sarah Breen (Gill Books)Filter This – Sophie White (Hachette Ireland)Postscript – Cecelia Ahern (HarperFiction)When All is Said – Anne Griffin (Hodder & Stoughton)Schmidt Happens – Ross O’Carroll-Kelly (Penguin Ireland)Seven Letters – Sinéad Moriarty (Penguin Ireland)Bookselling Ireland Non-Fiction Book of the YearElsewhere – Rosita Boland (Doubleday Ireland)Heroic Failure – Fintan O’Toole (Head of Zeus)Republic of Shame – Caelainn Hogan (Penguin Ireland)Constellations – Sinéad Gleeson (Picador)The Border: The Legacy of a Century of Anglo-Irish Politics – Diarmaid Ferriter (Profile Books)The Education of an Idealist – Samantha Power (William Collins)Ireland AM Popular Non-Fiction Book of the YearMy Crazy World – Christy Dignam with Damian Corless (Simon & Schuster)Overcoming – Vicky Phelan with Naomi Linehan (Hachette Ireland)Barefoot Pilgrimage – Andrea Corr (HarperNonFiction)The Personals – Brian O’Connell (HarperNonFiction)Live While You Can – Fr Tony Coote (Hachette Books Ireland)The Making of a Detective – Pat Marry (Penguin Ireland)Sunday Independent Newcomer of the YearLeonard & Hungry Paul – Ronan Hession (Bluemoose Books)Last Ones Left Alive – Sarah Davis-Goff (Tinder Press)When All is Said – Anne Griffin (Hodder & Stoughton)Show Them a Good Time – Nicole Flattery (The Stinging Fly Press)Minor Monuments – Ian Maleney (Tramp Press)Don’t Touch My Hair – Emma Dabiri (Allen Lane)TheJournal.ie Best Irish Published Book of the YearThe Great Irish Science Book – Luke O’Neill, illustrated by Linda Fährlin (Gill Books)Children of the Troubles – Joe Duffy and Freya McClements (Hachette Books Ireland)Dare to Dream – Irish People Who Took on the World (and Won!) – Sarah Webb, illustrated by Graham Corcoran (The O’Brien Press)Beautiful Affair – Mike Hanrahan (HarperNonFiction)Ireland Through Birds: Journeys in Search of a Wild Nation – Conor W. O’Brien (Merrion Press)A History of Ireland in 100 Words – Sharon Arbuthnot, Máire Ní Mhaonaigh and Gregory Toner, illustrated by Joe McLaren (Royal Irish Academy)Irish Independent Crime Fiction Book of the YearRewind – Catherine Ryan Howard (Corvus)Cruel Acts – Jane Casey (HarperFiction)The Chain – Adrian McKinty (Orion)Twisted – Steve Cavanagh (Orion)The Wych Elm – Tana French (Viking)The Hiding Game – Louise Phillips (Hachette Ireland)Avoca Cookbook of the YearCornucopia: The Green Cookbook – Tony Keogh, Aoife Carrigy, the Chefs of Cornucopia, Deirdre and Dairine McCafferty (Gill Books)Clever Batch – Susan Jane White (Gill Books)One Pot Feeds All – Darina Allen (Kyle Books)Clodagh’s Suppers – Clodagh McKenna (Kyle Books)From the Oven to the Table – Diana Henry (Mitchell Beazley)Donal’s Super Food in Minutes – Donal Skehan (Yellow Kite)Bord Gáis Energy Sports Book of the YearAbout That Goal – The Official Autobiography of Seamus Darby – Seamus Darby with PJ Cunningham (Ballpoint Press) - on order, please reserve in person in branch.Recovering – Richie Sadlier with Dion Fanning (Gill Books)All In – Jamie Heaslip with Matt Cooper (Gill Books)Something in the Water: How Skibbereen Rowing Club Conquered the World – Kieran McCarthy (Mercier Press)Camouflage – My Story – Eoin Larkin with Pat Nolan (Reach Sport)The Dublin Marathon – Celebrating 40 Years – Sean McGoldrick (The O’Brien Press)RTÉ Radio One Listeners’ Choice AwardNight Boat to Tangier – Kevin Barry (Canongate Books) – Championed by Joe DuffyGirl – Edna O’Brien (Faber & Faber) – Championed by Sean O’RourkeShadowplay – Joseph O’Connor (Harvill Secker) – Championed by Ryan TubridyOvercoming – Vicky Phelan with Naomi Linehan (Hachette Books) – Championed by Ray D’ArcyOnce, Twice, Three Times an Aisling – Emer McLysaght and Sarah Breen (Gill Books) – Championed by Miriam O’CallaghanSpecsavers Children’s Book of the Year (Junior)The President’s Surprise – Peter Donnelly (Gill Books)Boot: Small Robot, Big Adventure – Shane Hegarty, illustrated by Ben Mantle (Hachette Children’s Group)Don’t Worry Little Crab – Chris Haughton (Walker Books)Tiny and Teeny – Chris Judge (Walker Books) - can be reserved through other local authorities123 Ireland! – Aoife Dooley (Little Island Books)Take Five – Niall Breslin, illustrated by Sheena Dempsey (Gill Books)Specsavers Children’s Book of the Year (Senior)Family Fun Unplugged – Peter Cosgrove (Penguin Ireland)The Lost Tide Warriors – Catherine Doyle (Bloomsbury Publishing)A Strange Kind of Brave – Sarah Moore Fitzgerald (Hachette Children’s Group)Gordon’s Game – Gordon D’Arcy and Paul Howard (Penguin Ireland)Shooting for the Stars – My Journey to Become Ireland’s First Astronaut – Norah Patten, illustrated by Jennifer Farley (The O’Brien Press)Lily at Lissadell – Judi Curtin (The O’Brien Press)Dept 51 @ Eason Teen / Young Adult Book of the YearToffee – Sarah Crossan (Bloomsbury Publishing)All the Invisible Things – Orlagh Collins (Bloomsbury Publishing)Perfectly Preventable Deaths – Deirdre Sullivan (Bonnier Books UK)Other Words for Smoke – Sarah Maria Griffin (Titan Books)The M Word – Brian Conaghan (Bloomsbury Publishing) -can be reserved through other local authoritiesAll the Bad Apples – Moïra Fowley-Doyle (Puffin)Listowel Writers’ Week Irish Poem of the YearSalt Rain – Audrey Molloy (Mslexia, September 2019)The Kerchief – Christine Broe (Poetry Ireland and Trócaire Poetry Competition 2019)Pine Box in the Flea Market – Dean Browne (The Stinging Fly, Summer 2019)Dear Sean – Paul McMahon (The North – Special Irish Issue)Writing.ie Short Story of the YearParrot – Nicole Flattery (The Stinging Fly, Issue 39, Volume 2, Winter 2018-19)A Real Woman – Orla McAlinden (Full of Grace, published by Red Stag)Mother May I – Amy Gaffney (HCE Review, Volume 3, Issue 1)Sparing the Heather – Louise Kennedy (Banshee, Issue 8)Balloon Animals – Laura-Blaise McDowell (Still Worlds Turning, published by No Alibis Press)The Lamb – Andrea Carter (Counterparts: A Synergy of Law and Literature, The Stinging Fly Press)The Love Leabhar Gaeilge Irish Language Book of the YearGáire in Éag – Seán Ó Muireagáin (Éabhlóid)Gráinne Gaiscíoch Gael – Siobhán Parkinson (Cois Life)Mar a Bhí ar dTús – Joe Steve Ó Neachtain (Cló Iar-Chonnacht)Tairngreacht – Proinsias Mac a’Bhaird (LeabhairComhar)Cití na gCártaí – Réaltán Ní Leannáin (Cois Life)An Tromdhámh – Feargal Ó Béarra (Leabhar Breac)Votes may be cast until 13th November, visit the Award website to register your vote. The winners will be announced at the gala ceremony in the Convention Centre Dublin, Spencer Dock, on Wednesday 20th November.
Idaho wins the 2019 International DUBLIN Literary Award
American author Emily Ruskovich has won the 2019 International DUBLIN Literary Award for her novel Idaho. Set in the Idaho Pandandle it tells the sory of the impact of an shocking act of violence on a family. The winning novel was chosen from a total of 141 titles, nominated by libraries in 115 cities across 41 countries. Idaho was nominated by the public library in Brugge, Belgium.The Award is organised and sponsored by Dublin City Council and at €100,000 is the world’s largest prize for a single novel published in English. Emily Ruskovich is the fourth American author to win the prize in its 24-year history.Uniquely, the Award receives its nominations from public libraries in cities around the globe and recognises both writers and translators. The winner was announced at a ceremony in Dublin's Mansion House today.Emily Ruskovich grew up in the Idaho Panhandle, on Hoodoo Mountain. Her fiction has appeared in Zoetrope, One Story and the Virginia Quarterly Review. A winner of a 2015 O. Henry Award and a graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, she now teaches creative writing at the University of Colorado, Denver. Idaho is her first novel. Speaking at the winner announcement, Lord Mayor & Patron of the remarked; ‘The International DUBLIN Literary Award is a great Dublin success and a great international success - and our thanks go to all who are involved in making the Award work – writers, translators, publishers, librarians, and the administrative staff of the City Council.’The 2019 judging panel, which includes Irish author Éilís Ní Dhuibhne, commented:‘At the heart of Emily Ruskovich’s haunting debut novel is the inexplicable. A young couple, Jenny and Wade, move from the prairies to the utter loneliness and unexpected isolation of the Northern Idaho mountains where they carelessly bought a piece of wooded land on a steep mountainside. As yet, they know nothing about the winter that will entrap them: masses of snow, no plow, no neighbours, the next settlement eight miles away. This is not an idyll. Years go by. They build a house with their own hands; two children are born – May and June. Then, all of a sudden, in a brutal flash, with no warning, their happiness and their love are destroyed forever.Ruskovich’s masterful achievement is to narrate with consummate skill the complex series of events covering a time-span of more than fifty years. Empathy and love stand next to cruelty and crime. Individual guilt, trauma and pain are looming as large as eventual forgiveness and the ability to live in half-knowledge. Ultimately, Idaho evolves into a masterpiece on the redeeming and regenerative potential of music, poetry, literature and art.’ The other judges were Ge Yan, Evie Wyld, Martin Middeke and Hans-Christian Oeser. The non-voting chair was Judge Eugene Sullivan.Copies of the winner, the shortlist and the full list of novels nominated for the 2019 award available to borrow from Dublin Public libraries at https://dcpla.ie/Idaho
Lord Mayor of Dublin, Nial Ring, launched today (27th February) the programme for the 2019 Dublin: One City One Book which this year features The Country Girls Trilogy by Edna O’Brien. The Country Girls Trilogy joins a long list of illustrious titles as this year’s featured book in the Dublin: One City One Book Festival. Dublin One City One Book is a Dublin City Council initiative, led by Dublin City Public Libraries, which encourages everyone to read a book connected with the capital city during the month of April every year.The Country Girls Trilogy, published by Faber & Faber, is introduced by Eimear McBride and includes The Country Girls and its sequels The Lonely Girl and Girls in Their Married Bliss, which changed the temperature of Irish literature in the 1960s and inspired generations of readers and writers. The passion, artistry and courage of Edna O’Brien’s vision in these novels continue to resonate into the 21st century.Speaking at the launch in Dublin’s Mansion House, the Lord Mayor remarked:“Edna O’Brien is one of Ireland’s most talented, treasured and most read authors, so I am very proud that our capital city is honouring her talent and legacy by selecting her much acclaimed work ‘The Country Girls Trilogy’ as the ‘Dublin One City One Book’ choice this year. Dublin City Council’s initiative is a creative and inclusive way to get all our citizens reading. With copies of The Country Girls Trilogy available to borrow for free throughout our public library network, it just remains for the people of Dublin to embrace and enjoy this great book which I know they will.”The month-long festival will feature dramatised readings, a new Dublin City Libraries exhibition banned books titled Evil Literature, talks on censorship, women’s roles and Irish society in 1950s and ‘60s, coming of age novels, music performances, film screenings, documentaries, workshops and seminars. The four public library services in the Dublin area will be hosting events as well as organisations such as Irish Writers Centre, The New Theatre, IFI, Trinity College, UCD and National Library.Edna O’Brien said:"I worked in Dublin as an apprentice pharmacist from 1948 to 1952, so it's where I first encountered literature and set out on the very secret and profane matter of writing The Country Girls Trilogy.""I never dreamed the Trilogy would last so long and make it to this winning post. I am delighted and hope for new readers who won’t have to hide it under the bedcovers as they did in the sixties and onwards..... Dublin has given me longevity.” The flagship event of this year’s festival is An Evening With Edna, an evening of music, readings and discussion in The Round Room, Mansion House on Wednesday 24th April. Edna O’Brien will be interviewed about her enormous contribution to world literature by writer Colum McCann. Singer Moya Brennan and harpist Cormac de Barra will play some of her favourite music and selected excerpts from The Country Girls Trilogy will be read by actor Seána Kerslake, star of the new movie The Hole in the Ground. This event is free but booking is essential at www.dublinonecityonebook.ie/programme Dublin’s acting City Librarian, Brendan Teeling invited Dubliners to share in the City’s celebration of the books, saying:“We work hard every year to choose a book that will capture the imagination of the people of Dublin, of all ages and walks of life. Exquisitely written, moving, humorous, full of compelling characters, and still as relevant as when it was written in the early 1960s, I know that The Country Girls Trilogy will prove a rewarding experience for all who engage with Dublin One City One Book 2019. In Edna O’Brien’s home county of Clare, book clubs affiliated with Clare County Libraries will be reading the book during April and hosting their own event to honour Edna O’Brien. RTÉ Radio One’s The Book on One will feature The Country Girls during the month of April. A new adaptation by Edna O’Brien of The Country Girls runs at the Abbey Theatre from 23rd February to 6th April before going on a national tour. Faber & Faber have produced a special edition of the trilogy for the Festival (Photo Below), and Lee Brackstone, O’Brien’s editor at Faber & Faber, remarked:‘In 1960 Edna O’Brien detonated a literary bomb, the reverberations of which continue to work their way through the culture and the Irish diaspora. The Country Girls is one of the beacons of radical 20th century literature.’Printed programme of events can be picked up in all our Dublin City Public Library Branches and bookshops across Dublin. The Country Girls Trilogy is available to borrow from libraries, can be reserved online, downloaded as an eBook from the library’s free Borrowbox app, and buy in bookshops. It is available in audio book format and has been produced in Braille by the National Council for the Blind of Ireland.There are a whole host of events to mark the One City One Book festival, highlights of the programme include;An Evening With Edna. The Round Room, Mansion House. Wednesday 24th AprilEdna O’Brien will be interviewed about her enormous contribution to world literature by writer Colum McCann. Singer Moya Brennan and harpist Cormac de Barra will play some of her favourite music and selected excerpts from the Country Girls will be read by Seána Kerslake at this very special event. This event is free but booking is essential at www.dublinonecityonebook.ie/programmeEvil Literature: Banned Books Exhibition. Dublin City Library & Archive, 138-144 Pearse St, Dublin 2. From 3rd April to 31st May 2019. Launch and Event Wednesday 3rd April.This exhibition of banned books is based on the collections of Dublin City Reading Room and Dublin City Archives. Following the official launch on 3rd April there will be a discussion on the history of book censorship in Ireland with Dr Margaret Kelleher (UCD), Tom Quinlan, Keeper of the National Archives, and historian Donal Fallon. Chaired by Madeleine Keane, Sunday Independent Literary Editor.Free. Booking on EventBrite for talk.Coming of Age Novels. Dublin City Library & Archive, Pearse St. Thursday 11th April.Join authors Catherine Dunne and Alan McMonagle to discuss The Country Girls Trilogy and why coming of age stories are so powerfully resonant for readers. Chaired by Michael G. Cronin, lecturer in English at Maynooth University.Free. Booking on Eventbrite.ieGirls in Their Married Bliss on Stage. The New Theatre, Temple Bar. 24th to 27th April.A selection of excerpts from the final book in Edna O’Brien’s acclaimed trilogy. Romantic Baba and pragmatic Baba, now both married, experience the trials and troubles of love and passion against the drop of 1960s London.Box Office: www.thenewtheatre.com Tickets €8/€6Irish Writers Centre Workshops April 13th and 18th.The Irish Writers Centre is playing homage to The Country Girls Trilogy and 1950s Ireland with bespoke offerings arising from themes in the books. Workshops will cover such topics as: researching social history for authentic writing, developing a character over time and the tricky task of writing sensual stories with the uncompromising flair of Edna O’Brien. Plus a panel discussion focussing on class and urban/rural divides in Irish society. Featuring acclaimed Irish writers including Catherine Dunne and Dermot Bolger.Free. Booking at www.irishwriterscentre.ieThe Country Girls at the Abbey Theatre. 23rd February to 6th April.Edna O’Brien revisits her era-defining debut novel in a new stage adaptation of The Country Girls at the Abbey Theatre. Directed by Graham McLaren. After the Dublin run, The Country Girls will go on a national tour.www.abbeytheatre.ie or Box Office 01-8787222Full Programme can be viewed here and event details on www.dublinonecityonebook.ieAboutThe BookWhen The Country Girls, Edna O’Brien’s first novel, appeared in 1960, it predated and anticipated the feminist revolution. It stood out and stood alone, upturning every category. There was little to compare with it. The Country Girls grew over time to what we now know as The Country Girls Trilogy, encompassing the title volume, a second novel Girl with Green Eyes, published in 1962, and Girls in Their Married Bliss, published in 1964. It is given to few to write their most important works early on. Quite simply, The Country Girls is a twentieth-century literary masterpiece which anticipates and puts into effect a feminist revolution all of its own. It tells the story of two young girls from Country Clare, Cait Brady and Baba Brennan, and tracks them from childhood through the vicissitudes of adolescence, marriage, emigration to Dublin and then to London and the terrible reckonings of adult life. Cait, the timid romanticist, who unfailingly falls for the wrong kind of man and suffers accordingly, is contrasted with Baba who is more hard-nosed, cynical, and pragmatic. The Country Girls Trilogy is outstanding because of its stylistic variation and the uncanny accuracy of its vision: each of the novels is tonally quite different but each achieves the same level of precision and insight into the social and emotional conditions of lives in 1950s rural Ireland and in London in the 1960s.The AuthorEdna O’Brien’s first novel, The Country Girls, was published in 1960. Since then, she has published prolifically across numerous genres. Her works includes 18 novels, 9 collections of short stories, 4 plays, biographies of James Joyce and Byron, a cultural history of Ireland, a memoir, and a volume of poetry. Edna O’Brien would be revered if she had written nothing other than The Country Girls Trilogy. However, she has continued to produce distinctive and engaging novels and stories that particularly follow the course of women’s lives and capture the emotional fabric of their worlds with unfailing accuracy and insight. Edna O’Brien has changed the fabric of the Irish novel by widening its circumference in enduring ways. She has used her breath-taking inventiveness, creative audacity, distinctive vision, and unsurpassed stylistic precision to give voice to female experience and sexuality and to bring a myriad of feminist themes into the ambit of the novel. Her fiction is above all to be relished for its truth, its wit, its emotional scale and depth, and the incisiveness of its style. To read Edna O’Brien is to make the acquaintance of a writer with a drive to represent the modern world in all of its uncomfortable and unlovely but eminently human aspects and of an artist besotted with the English language which she deploys with fastidious care. Edna O’Brien is the recipient of many awards, including the Irish PEN Lifetime Achievement Award, the American National Arts Gold Medal, the Frank O’Connor Prize and the PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature. Born and raised in the west of Ireland, she has lived in London for many years. Dublin One City One BookPrevious books featured are: At Swim Two Birds by Flann O’ Brien (2006); A Long Long Way by Sebastian Barry (2007); Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift (2008); Dracula by Bram Stoker (2009); The Picture of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde (2010; Ghost Light by Joseph O’Connor (2011); Dubliners by James Joyce (2012); Strumpet City by James Plunkett (2013); If Ever You Go: a map of Dublin in poetry and song edited by Pat Boran and Gerard Smyth (2014); The Barrytown Trilogy by Roddy Doyle (2015); Fallen by Lia Mills (2016); Echoland by Joe Joyce (2017) and The Long Gaze Back, An Anthology of Irish Women Writers edited by Sinéad Gleeson (2018).
The longlist of books nominated for the 2013 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award was announced today, Monday, 12th November. With 154 books, nominated by libraries in 120 cities, in 44 countries, in 19 languages, it's the most international of literary awards.Right: Dublin City Librarian, Margaret Hayes, and the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Cllr Naoise Ó Muirí, Patron of the Award (click to view larger image).Eight novels by Irish authors are among the 154 books that have been nominated. Nominations also include 43 American, 22 British and 12 Canadian novels, as well as 42 books translated into English.Organised and administered by Dublin City Public Libraries, the 2013 Award was launched today by the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Cllr Naoise Ó Muirí, Patron of the Award, at a ceremony in the Dublin City Library and Archive, headquarters of the city library service.Left: The Dublin City Library and Archive, Pearse Street, headquarters of the City Library Service.The most nominated book is 'The Sense of an Ending' by Julian Barnes, which received fifteen nominations from libraries in Australia, Belgium, Canada, Croatia, Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Ireland, the Netherlands, the UK and the USA.The 2012 winning title was 'Even the Dogs' by British novelist Jon McGregor.All the novels nominated for the Award are available for readers to borrow from branches of Dublin City Public Libraries (check the library catalogue), so now is the time to get reading in tandem with the five judges who have the unenviable task of picking a shortlist and ultimately the winning title. So lots of reading to do between now and April 9 next year when the shortlist will be announced. The winner will be announced on June 6, 2013.
International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award Winner 2011 Colum McCann
Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann is the winner of the 2011 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. The novel was chosen from a shortlist of 10, and a longlist of 162 books by 166 libraries - representing 126 cities in 43 countries.'New York, August 1974: a man is walking in the sky. Between the newly built Twin Towers, the man twirls through the air. Far below, the lives of complete strangers spin towards each other: Corrigan, a radical Irish monk working in the Bronx; Claire, a delicate Upper East Side housewife reeling from the death of her son; Lara, a drug-addled young artist; Gloria, solid and proud despite decades of hardship; Tillie, a hooker who used to dream of a better life; and Jazzlyn, her beautiful daughter raised on promises that reach beyond the skyline of New York. In the shadow of one reckless and beautiful act, these disparate lives will collide, and be transformed for ever.'Colum McCann, born in Dublin, Ireland, is the author of five novels and two collections of stories. He has won numerous international literary awards. Zoli, Dancer and This Side of Brightness (published in the UK by Bloomsbury in July 2010) were international bestsellers and his fiction has been published in over thirty languages. He lives in New YorkIn his acceptance speech Colum McCann commented:"I am completely floored by this – exhilarated, proud, but most of all humbled –I mean truly humbled – and nervous …. humbled not just by the experience, but by the whole history, local and international, that this encompasses: all the writers and all the libraries, all the readers, all the guests here tonight, and, in fact, all the writers down through the years who have written about, or dreamed about, this very fine city, this country of literature." Let The Great World Spin is available to borrow from Dublin City Public Libraries.(Photo Jason Clarke Photography)Visit the Award Website.