Anne Enright, Paul Murray and Mark O’Connell on The Writers’ Prize shortlist

In The Irish Times this Saturday, Hisham Matar talks to Edel Coffey about his new novel, My Friends; Richard Coles talks to Rosita Boland about his varied career ahead of two live Irish dates next week; and there is a Q&A with Sam Blake about her career and latest thriller, Three Little Birds.

Reviews are Niall Ó Dochartaigh on The Routledge Handbook of the Northern Ireland Conflict and Peace; Kevin Power on Every Man for Himself and God against All: A Memoir by Werner Herzog; Stephen Sexton on the best new poetry; Pat Carty on The Underground Sea by John Berger; Eamon Sweeney on Terri Hooley: Seventy-Five Revolutions by Stuart Bailie; Kevin Gildea on Now Now Express by John Fleming; Brian Maye on The Battle to Control Female Fertility in Modern Ireland by Mary E Daly; Ian Hughes on After Eden: A Short History of the World by John Charles Chasteen; Pragya Agarwal on Normal Women by Ainslie Hogarth; Aifric Mac Aodha in Inside Innti: A New Wave in Irish Poetry; and Niamh Jiménez on Not the End of the World by Hannah Ritchie.

The Lock-Up by John Banville is this weekend’s Irish Times Eason offer. You can buy the award-winning author’s latest bestselling thriller for just €5.99, a €5 saving, at any store with your paper.

Anne Enright, Paul Murray and Mark O’Connell have been shortlisted for The Writers’ Prize, formerly the Rathbones Folio Prize. Open to all works of literature, regardless of form, The Writers’ Prize is the only international, English-language award nominated and judged purely by other writers, and this year goes even further by leaving the outcome entirely to members of the Folio Academy rather than individual judges.

Demonstrating the prize’s unique multi-genre reach across the literary landscape, the nine shortlisted works span time periods and locations, transporting readers from Nova Scotia in the 1900s to Victorian England, from 17th-century Holland to 20th-century Ireland. Laura Cumming has been shortlisted for a third time across three consecutive books, and Zadie Smith receives her second nomination, after being shortlisted for her short story collection Grand Union in 2020.

UK and Irish writers dominate this year’s shortlist, which is open to writers across the world, with three of the nine shortlisted authors hailing from Dublin, and only one author based in North America.

The Folio Academy, made up of over 350 acclaimed writers who represent excellence in all areas of literature, will determine both shortlists and winners for 2024. Having cast their votes to arrive at today’s shortlist, academy members will now have access to all nine titles thanks to a partnership with NetGalley, before having a final say on the three category winners and the overall Writers’ Prize Book of the Year. The winners will be announced at the London Book Fair on March 13th.

Category winners in Fiction, Non-fiction and Poetry will receive a £2,000 prize, and the winner of the Writers’ Prize Book of the Year will receive an additional £30,000.

FICTION SHORTLIST

The Wren, The Wren (Jonathan Cape) by Anne Enright; The Bee Sting (Hamish Hamilton) by Paul Murray; The Fraud (Hamish Hamilton) by Zadie Smith.

NONFICTION SHORTLIST

Thunderclap: A Memoir of Life and Art and Sudden Death (Chatto & Windus) by Laura Cumming;

Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World (Allen Lane) by Naomi Klein; A Thread of Violence: A Story of Truth, Invention and Murder (Granta) by Mark O’Connell.

POETRY SHORTLIST

Self-Portrait as Othello (Carcanet Press) by Jason Allen-Paisant; The Home Child (Chatto & Windus) by Liz Berry; Bright Fear (Faber) by Mary Jean Chan.

Minna Fry, Director of the Writers’ Prize, said: ‘I’m absolutely delighted with this year’s shortlists, which seem to reflect the very best of 2023′s literature and include several titles that I’ve personally been surprised not to see on other prizes’ lists. We are grateful to the Academy, which has taken seriously its responsibility for highlighting and singling out these wonderful books, and we hugely look forward to seeing the eventual winners emerge. The prize could not be happening without the financial support of business corporations, literary and charitable institutions, and members of the Folio Academy. I hope very much that this year’s prize will justify their faith in us and help to secure funding for a strong future.’

Last year, Margo Jefferson took the overall prize for her “astounding and rhapsodic book,” Constructing a Nervous System (Granta), alongside Victoria Adukwei Bulley, who was awarded the Poetry Prize for her debut collection Quiet (Faber) and Michelle de Kretser who won the fiction category for Scary Monsters (Atlantic).

Previous winners are Colm Tóibín (2022), Carmen Maria Machado (2021), Valeria Luiselli (2020), Raymond Antrobus (2019), Richard Lloyd Parry (2018), Hisham Matar (2017), Akhil Sharma (2015) and George Saunders (2014).

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The Cúirt New Writing Prize, kindly sponsored by Tigh Neachtain in memory of Lena McGuire is open for submissions until Monday, 29th January 2024 at 5pm. There are three categories: poetry, short fiction, and short fiction and poetry in Irish, and submissions are welcomed from both Irish and International writers.

This year Cúirt welcome Sara Baume as the short fiction judge, Elaine Feeney as the poetry judge, and Doireann Ní Ghríofa as the Irish language poetry and short fiction judge.

The winner in each category will be awarded a €500 cash prize and the opportunity to read at the 39th annual Cúirt International Festival of Literature which will take place in Galway from April 23rd to 28th.

For full details, or to submit your work, visit: cuirt.ie/cuirt-new-writing-prize-2024/

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The Christopher G. Moore Foundation’s seventh annual literary prize honouring books that feature human rights themes has been awarded to Belly Woman: Birth, Blood & Ebola - The Untold Story by Benjamin Black (Neem Tree Press).

The 2023 jury, comprised of Dr Jackie Dugard, senior lecturer of Human Rights at Columbia University; Roja Fazaeli, Professor in Law and Islamic Studies, University of Galway; and human rights barrister, academic, author and broadcaster, Geoffrey Robertson, KC, were unanimous in their choice. Belly Woman is a unique work combining investigative reporting and advocacy. A young doctor’s harrowing account of his experience in helping pregnant women give birth during an Ebola epidemic and Covid-19 pandemic. His book is set in Sierra Leone, 2014-2020. In 2014, when the author arrived, Sierra Leone was ranked the country with the highest death rate of pregnant women in the world. Dr. Black was forced to make impossible decisions on the maternity ward, facing moral dilemmas in the treatment centres, Belly Woman shines a light on an important story that has rarely surfaced on the literary radar screen.

Black is a consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist in London and a specialist adviser to international aid organisations. The jury commented: “The winner, Belly Woman, was an extraordinary book on many levels. In telling the story of the Ebola and Covid crises in Sierra Leone, Black wrote in a moving way about its victims, highlighting the voices of women, giving them agency. Their stories were interwoven to powerfully illustrate how a doctor in the field can practice medicine in ways that guide the advancement of global health and human rights. On a different level, he also showed the disparities between the global north and south through a human rights lens, reminding us that these health crises are not a new phenomenon, and that the international community has repeatedly been incapable of protecting human rights.”

The judges also gave an honourable mention to Antony Loewenstein for The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World (Verso Books). Loewenstein’s exposé documents the role of Israel’s military-industrial complex in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, where they tested weaponry and surveillance technology. Having shown live data as to effectiveness, they exported this technology around the world, to despots and democracies alike. It is an important and powerful piece of on the ground reporting combined with extensive research about the world’s most dangerous region.

The judges and the Moore Foundation Trustees also recognised a remarkable book, written by a 12-year-old refugee from Ukraine now living in Ireland, with a Special Prize for Young Authors awarded to You Don’t Know What War Is: The Diary of a Young Girl from Ukraine by Yeva Skalietska (Bloomsbury Children’s Books).

Yeva’s moving diary, written daily as she lived through the first 12 days after the Russian invasion, poignantly illustrates how the war changed her young life forever. The jury said: “We are delighted to recognise Yeva’s extraordinary book by awarding this Special Prize for Young Writers. Her story is universal, one that applies as much to Gaza or any war, as it does to what’s happening in Ukraine. It is an extremely poignant, relevant book, written in a way that personalises the conflict – as Yeva and her family faced the terror of fleeing and sheltering from the bombing. We enter her world from a child’s point of view, a world of school, friends and family. You Don’t Know What War Is is a book that should be read and discussed by anyone who is interested in understanding the personal cost of current or future conflicts.”