Colm Toibin is the only Irish writer on this year's shortlist for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. The list includes two women and four men in an international selection nominated by libraries from around the world. Interestingly, neither US nor English writers feature.
At £100,000 for the winning author, or £75,000 to the author and £25,000 to the translator should the winning novel be written in a language other than English, IMPAC remains after six years the world's richest prize for a single work of fiction.
Toibin's fourth novel, The Blackwater Lightship, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1999. Set in contemporary Wexford, it tells the story of a family confronted by terminal illness.
Toibin not only looks at the situation from the viewpoint of the various family members, but also evokes a vivid sense of modern Ireland as a country attempting to make sense of its contrasting selves.
No Great Mischief seemed to be the strongest bet for last year's Booker Prize. It is the debut novel of the great short story writer, veteran Scots-Canadian Alistair Macleod. It is magnificent; a dramatic and lyrical oral history following a Scots-Canadian clan through several generations, it received spectacular reviews.
But it not only failed to win the Booker, won by his fellow Canadian Margaret Atwood, it was not even shortlisted. It would be a worthy winner.
Scots writer Andrew O'Hagan impressed with his first novel, Our Fathers, a powerful study of three generations of a family torn by idealism and despair.
Hugh Bawn, once a socialist of vision, lies dying in Glasgow. Into his final hours walks his grandson, Jamie, who is drawn to the mentor who meant far more to him than his father did.
Through their encounter a portrait of a family's history evolves. A strong, profound novel about the failure of dreams, Our Fathers was also Booker shortlisted in 1999. It will have wide support.
Silvia Molina is one of Mexico's most popular writers and is well known as a children's author. The Love You Promised Me (translated from the Spanish by David Unger) follows Marcela, devastated by a brief affair on her return to her home town. There she sets about recovering from her disappointment while discovering some truths about her parents.
West Indian writers have featured on previous IMPAC shortlists. This year Margaret Cezair-Thompson, a Jamaican academic in Massachusetts, makes a claim with her first novel, The True History of Paradise, in which the Landing clan gathers in Jamaica for a family funeral.
The reigning boy wonder of Russian literature - and of most other places as well - is Victor Pelevin, author of The Clay Machine-Gun (translated by Andrew Bromfield). He is a dazzlingly original satirist and is hailed as one of the most exciting new talents in the world.
