Paul Lynch novel ‘Grace’ nominated for second major award in less than a month

Irish author Paul Lynch's Famine novel Grace is among six books shortlisted for this year's Walter Scott prize for historical fiction, announced on Tuesday.

The winner will be disclosed on June 16th next at Melrose in Scotland and the £25,000 prize will be presented by Irish author Sebastian Barry. He won the 2017 prize for his novel Days Without End. A previous novel of Barry's On Canaan's Side was the 2012 winner.

Others on this year's Walter Scott short list include Jennifer Egan for Manhattan Beach, Jane Harris for Sugar Money, Patrick McGrath for The Wardrobe Mistress, Ra chel Malik for Miss Boston and Miss Hargreaves, and Benjamin Myers for The Gallows Pole .

In a commentary the judges described Grace as "a work of great lyricism. Its beautiful prose is put to devastating effect in his vivid story of the Irish potato famine which killed at least a million people."

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‘Future greatness’

In a review for The Irish Times last September New York writer Charles Shafaieh said that: "Though only suggesting the possibility of future greatness with Grace, Lynch has given us poignant glimpses of the human body's limits, that peculiar messiness of identity, and what happens when parts of a society fail to help, or even acknowledge, those in need."

The Walter Scott Prize celebrates its ninth anniversary this year and to qualify books must be set at least 60 years ago.

On March 23rd last it was announced that Grace was among five books nominated for the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award 2018.

Others included Midwinter Break by Bernard MacLaverty, Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney, Harvesting by Lisa Harding, The Woodcutter and his Family by Frank McGuinness. The winner will be announced at the opening of Listowel Writers' Week on May 30th.