Michael Magee, Derry Girls and Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland in for Ewart-Biggs Literary Prize

In The Irish Times tomorrow, Róisín Ingle talks to Jay McGuiness about his dystopian young adult novel, Blood Flowers, and there is a Q&A with Rachael English about her career and her latest novel, Whatever Happened to Birdy Troy?

Reviews are Ian Hughes on We Are Free to Change the World: Hannah Arendt’s Lessons in Love and Disobedience by Lyndsey Stonebridge; Oliver Farry on Our Enemies Will Vanish by Yaroslav Trofimov; Brian Maye on Margaret Thatcher, the Conservative Party and Northern Ireland; Michael Cronin on the best new fiction in translations; James Conor Patterson on The City of Today is a Dying Thing by Des Fitzgerald; John Boyne on Come and Get It by Kiley Reid; Éilís Níi Dhuibhne on The Long-Winded Lady by Maeve Brennan; Tony Clayton-Lea on Wild Colonial Boys by Thomas Burgess; Sara Keating on children’s books; Brigid O’Dea on Sleepless by Annabel Abbs; John Self on Hard by a Great Forest by Leo Vardiashvili; and Neil Hegarty on Night Swimmers by Roisin Maguire.

This weekend’s Irish Times Eason book offer is Don’t Look Back by Jo Spain. You can buy this bestselling thriller for €5.99, a €5 saving, with your newspaper at any branch.

Close to Home by Michael Magee has been shortlisted for the 28th Christopher Ewart-Biggs Literary Prize, along with two television programmes, the final episode of Derry Girls, the Channel 4 series, and Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland, the five-part BBC2 TV series; a play, Agreement by Owen McCafferty; and two academic works, Uncivil War: the British Army and the Troubles, 1966-1975 (Cambridge University Press) by Huw Bennett and Getting to Good Friday: Literature and the Peace Process in Northern Ireland by Marilynn Richtarik (Oxford University Press).

Speaking for the judges, Prof Roy Foster said: “This year’s shortlist highlights various analyses of Northern Ireland’s recent past, from different genres.

“It includes a forensically detailed but intensely readable account of the British Army’s record during the early years of the Troubles, revealing much about the military mind and the strategic decisions whereby the army decided by 1975 that the conflict was unresolvable; the final episode of the legendary television series ‘Derry Girls’, movingly evoking the impact of the Good Friday Agreement; a sharp-edged novel delineating the world of a young man coping with a questionable future in the aftermath of community violence; a brilliantly accomplished play tracking the negotiations and personal conflicts which lay behind the Agreement; a major television series following the development of the Troubles through a variety of voices and testaments, many rarely heard; and a searching and original study of the interplay between creative literature and the political developments which climaxed with the Agreement.

“Overall, this powerful list presents works which define, in unexpected ways, the journey towards the Agreement reached just over a quarter of a century ago- reminding us not only of its considerable achievement, but the fragility of the structures on which it was based.”

The winner of the £7,500 prize, instituted in memory of the British ambassador to Ireland who was murdered by the IRA in 1976, will be announced on February 27th in the Irish Embassy, London.

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Following the success of Fitzcarraldo Editions and And Other Stories, Foundry Editions is a new independent publisher which uncovers hidden gems from and about the Mediterranean Basin and brings them to English-language readers for the first time, with the first titles publishing in June.

Founder Richard Village said: “We are on a mission to uncover authors who are new to English speakers, and to share the joy of reading their stories, which come from a part of the world that has always been a source of cultural and emotional inspiration for English-language readers. We want to be an exemplary part of that significant cultural movement that puts quality translated fiction into the hands of readers.”

Foundry Editions will release the first three books this summer: the first stop is Cyprus in Brandy Sour, by Constantia Soteriou/translation by Lina Protopapa – an inventive novel which explores the turbulent history of Cyprus via the island’s iconic Ledra Palace Hotel; next up is Italy with Your Little Matter, by Maria Grazia Calandrone/translated by Antonella Lettieri – a poetic and philosophical rumination on the impoverished, marginalised women of the Italian south; and Far, by Rosa Ribas/translated by Charlotte Coombe – an atmospheric, satirical take on post-crash Spain and its abandoned urban developments.