49 Books 30 Countries 1 Winner 69 Libraries 10 Languages 2021 LONGLIST

Clap When You Land Elizabeth Acevedo...... 1 Things That Fall From The Sky Selja Ahava...... 1 Homeland Fernando Aramburu...... 1 The Vanishing Half Brit Bennett...... 2 The White Girl Tony Birch...... 2 It Would Be Night In Caracus Karina Sainz Borgo...... 2 The Cat and The City Nick Bradley...... 3 The Confessions of Frannie Langton Sara Collins...... 3 The Innocents Michael Crummy...... 4 The Pelican: a comedy Martin Michael Driessen...... 4 Catacombs Mary Anna Evans...... 5 Girl, Woman, Other Bernardine Evaristo...... 5 The Other Name: Septology 1-11 Jon Fosse...... 5 Gun Island Amitav Ghosh...... 6 When All Is Said Anne Griffin...... 6 The Eighth Life: ( for Brilka ) Nino Haratischwili...... 6 Beyond Yamashita and Percival Shaari Isa...... 7 . Tyll Daniel Kehlmann...... 7 The Ditch Herman Koch...... 8 . While The Music Played Nathaniel Lande...... 8 Until Stones Become Lighter Than Water António Lobo Antunes...... 9 Lost Children Archive Valeria Luiselli...... 9 The Boy Marcus Malte ...... 10 Auē Becky Manawatu...... 10 The Glass Hotel Emily St. John Mandel...... 11 Apeirogon Colum McCann...... 11 Hurricane Season Fernanda Melchor...... 11 The Silent Patient Alex Michaelides...... 12 Cilka’s Journey Heather Morris...... 12 Dark Mother Earth Kristian Novak...... 12 Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars. Joyce Carol Oates...... 13 Inland Téa Obreht...... 13 Shadowplay Joseph O’Connor...... 13 Mona in Three Acts Griet Op de Beeck...... 14 This Excellent Machine Stephen Orr...... 14 . Mary Toft; or, The Rabbit Queen Dexter Palmer...... 15 The Pine Islands Marion Poschmann...... 15 A Chronicle of Forgetting Sebastijan Pregelj...... 16 We Cast a Shadow Maurice Ruffin...... 16 Beside Myself Sasha Marianna Salzmann...... 16 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World Elif Shafak...... 17 The Subtweet: A Novel Vivek Shraya...... 17 Crossing Patjim Statovci...... 18 On Earth We’re Briefly GorgeousOcean Vuong...... 18 The Trumpet Shall Sound Eibhear Walshe...... 18 The Nickel Boys Colson Whitehead...... 19 Reproduction Ian Williams...... 19 The Bird King G.Willow Wilson...... 20 The Yield Tara June Winch...... 20 Translated Novels...... 21 Clap When You Land Things That Fall From The Sky Homeland Elizabeth Acevedo Selja Ahava Fernando Aramburu

Nominated by: Translated from the Finnish by Emily Translated from the Spanish by Alfred Rede de Bibliotecas de Lisboa-Portugal Jeremiah and Fleur Jeremiah McAdam

In a novel-in-verse Nominated by: Nominated by: that brims with Tampere City Library, Finland Universitӓts-und Landesbibliothek grief and love, Bonn, Germany National Book One quirk of fate In the heart of Award-winning and can send life THE 2021 LONGLIST Spain’s Basque New York Times spiralling in the bestselling author most unexpected Country, two Elizabeth Acevedo direction... friends, Miren and writes about the A young girl loses Bittori, find their devastation of loss, her mother when worlds upended the difficulty of a block of ice falls by violence. When forgiveness, and the bittersweet bonds from the sky. A Bittori’s husband that shape our lives. woman wins the runs afoul of jackpot twice. A the separatist Camino Rios lives for the summers man is struck by organization ETA, when her father visits her in the lightning four times. Coincidence? Or a terrorist group of which Miren’s son, Dominican Republic. But this time, on something more? Joxe Mari, is a member, both women the day when his plane is supposed to Things That Fall from the Sky is the must choose between their friendship land, Camino arrives at the airport to tale of three lives that are changed and their families. Moving back and see crowds of crying people…In New forever by random events. But it is also forth in time and told through the York City, Yahaira Rios is called to the a meditation on the endurance of love, eyes of a rich cast of characters from principal’s office, where her mother the passage of time and the pain of loss. all walks of life, Fernando Aramburu’s is waiting to tell her that her father, Selja Ahava, one of Finland’s best-loved dazzling novel probes the lasting legacy her hero, has died in a plane crash. novelists, weaves these stories together of conflict. A work of nearly unbearable Separated by distance—and Papi’s in an unforgettable, one-of-a-kind fable suspense, Homeland is a searing secrets—the two girls are forced to face about the twists and turns that can examination of truth, reconciliation, and a new reality in which their father is define a lifetime. coming to terms with history. dead and their lives are forever altered. And then, when it seems like they’ve Selja Ahava is a novelist and a scriptwriter. Fernando Aramburu, born in San Sebastián, lost everything of their father, they learn Her acclaimed debut novel The Day the Spain, in 1959 is considered one of the most of each other. Whale Swam through London (2010) was remarkable writers in the Spanish language. nominated for the Helsingin Sanomat He won the Ramón Gómez de la Serna Prize in 1997, the Euskadi Prize in 2001, Elizabeth Acevedo is the author of The Literary Prize, and won the Laura Hirvisaari and, for his short story collection Los peces Poet X—which won the National Book Prize (the Bookseller’s Literary Prize) in 2010. de la amargura, the Mario Vargas Llosa Award for Young People’s Literature, the Her second novel, Things that Fall from the NH Short Story Award, the Dulce Chacón Michael L. Printz Award, the Pura Belpré Sky (2015) won the EU Prize for Literature in Prize, and the Prize of the Spanish Royal Award, the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award, 2016, and was nominated for the Finlandia Academy in 2008. Among his most recent and the Walter Award—as well as With the Prize and the Tulenkantajat Prize. novels, Años lentoswon the Premio Tusquets Fire on High and Clap When You Land. She de Novela in 2011 and was named Book is a National Poetry Slam champion and and are the of the Year in 2012 by the booksellers of holds an MFA in creative writing from the Emily Jeremiah Fleur Jeremiah translators of Aki Ollikainen’s White Hunger Madrid. But it is his novel Patria(Homeland), University of Maryland. Acevedo lives with (Pereine Press, 2015), which was longlisted a stunning success among readers and her partner in Washington, DC. for the 2016 Man Booker International winner of unanimous acclaim (National Prize. Their other co-translations include Prize for Literature, National Critics Prize, Available to borrow on Borrowbox Asko Sahlberg’s The Brothers (Peirene Press, Euskadi Prize, Francisco Umbral Prize, Strega from Dublin City LIbraries/Public 2012). European Prize, Tomasi di Lampedusa Prize, Libraries Ireland. among many others) that has distinguished him as a writer who will leave his mark on Available to borrow on Borrowbox our era. from DublinCity Libraries/Public . Libraries Ireland.

. 1 dublinliteraryaward.ie . Alfred MacAdam is professor of Latin riveting, emotional family story and a Writing, and shortlisted for the 2020 Miles American literature at Barnard College- brilliant exploration of the American Franklin Literary Prize; Ghost River, winner Columbia University. He has translated history of passing. of the 2016 Victorian Premier’s Literary works by Carlos Fuentes, Mario Vargas Award for Indigenous Writing; and Blood, Llosa, Juan Carlos Onetti, José Donoso, Looking well beyond issues of race, The which was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin and Jorge Volpi among others. He recently Vanishing Half considers the lasting Award in 2012. He is also the author published an essay on the Portuguese poet influence of the past as it shapes of Shadowboxing and three short story Fernando Pessoa included in The Cambridge a person’s decisions, desires, and collections, Father’s Day, The Promise and Common People. In 2017 he was awarded Companion to Autobiography. expectations, and explores some of the the Patrick White Literary Award. In 2021 multiple reasons and realms in which he will release two new books, a poetry people sometimes feel pulled to live as collection, Whisper Songs, and a new short THE 2021 LONGLIST Available to borrow on Borrowbox something other than their origins. story collection, Dark as Last Night. Tony from DublinCity Libraries/Public Birch is also an activist, historian and Libraries Ireland. Brit Bennett, born and raised in Southern essayist. California, graduated from Stanford University and later earned her MFA in fiction at the University of Michigan, where Available to borrow on Borrowbox The Vanishing Half she won a Hopwood Award in Graduate from DublinCity Libraries/Public Brit Bennett Short Fiction as well as the 2014 Hurston/ Libraries Ireland. Wright Award for College Writers. Her work Nominated by: is featured in The New Yorker, The New Richland Library, United States York Times Magazine, The Paris Review, and Jezebel. She is one of the National Book It Would Be Night In Caracus From The New Foundation’s 2016 5 Under 35 honorees. Karina Sainz Borgo York Times- bestselling author Translated from the Spanish by Elizabeth of The Mothers, Bryer a stunning new novel about twin Nominated by: sisters, inseparable The White Girl Coordenação-Geral do Sistema Nacional as children, who Tony Birch de Bibliotecas Públicas ultimately choose to live in two very Nominated by: In Caracas, different worlds, State Library of Queensland, Australia Venezuela, Adelaida one black and one white. Falcón stands over an open grave. The Vignes twin sisters will always be Odette Brown has Alone, she buries identical. But after growing up together lived her whole her mother—the in a small, southern black community life on the fringes only family she has and running away at age sixteen, it’s not of a small country ever known—and just the shape of their daily lives that town. Raising her worries that when is different as adults, it’s everything: granddaughter Sissy night falls thieves their families, their communities, their on her own, Odette will rob the grave. racial identities. Many years later, one has managed to Even the dead cannot find peace here. sister lives with her black daughter in stay under the the same southern town she once tried radar of the welfare Adelaida had a stable childhood in a to escape. The other secretly passes authorities who prosperous Venezuela that accepted for white, and her white husband are removing Aboriginal children from immigrants in search of a better life, knows nothing of her past. Still, even their communities. When the menacing where she lived with her single- separated by so many miles and just Sergeant Lowe arrives in town, mother in a humble apartment. But as many lies, the fates of the twins determined to fully enforce the law, any now? Every day she lines up for bread remain intertwined. What will happen freedom that Odette and Sissy enjoy that will inevitably be sold out by the to the next generation, when their own comes under grave threat. Odette must time she reaches the registers. Every daughters’ storylines intersect? make an impossible choice to protect night she tapes her windows to shut her family. out the tear gas raining down on Weaving together multiple strands protesters. When looters masquerading and generations of this family, from Tony Birch is the author of three novels: the as revolutionaries take over her the Deep South to California, from the bestselling The White Girl, winner of the apartment, Adelaida must make a 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett 2020 NSW Premier’s Award for Indigenous series of gruesome choices in order to . dublinliteraryaward.ie 2

. survive in a country disintegrating into anarchy, where citizens are increasingly The Cat and The City The Confessions of pitted against each other. But just how Nick Bradley Frannie Langton far is she willing to go? Sara Collins Nominated by: A bold new voice from Latin America, Norfolk Library and Information Service, Nominated by: Karina Sainz Borgo’s touching, thrilling United Kingdom Jamaica Library Service, Jamaica debut is an ode to the Venezuelan The Seattle Public Library, United States people and a chilling reminder of In Tokyo – one how quickly the world we know can of the world’s crumble. ‘They say I must largest megacities be put to death for – a stray cat is THE 2021 LONGLIST was born and raised in what happened to Karina Sainz Borgo wending her way Caracas. She began her career in Venezuela Madame, and they through the back as a journalist for El Nacional. Since want me to confess. alleys. And, with immigrating to Spain ten years ago, she But how can I each detour, she has written for Vozpópuli and collaborates confess what I don’t brushes up against with the literary magazine Zenda. She is the believe I’ve done?’ the seemingly author of two nonfiction books, Tráfico y disparate lives Guaire (2008) and Caracas Hip-Hop (2008). of the city-dwellers, connecting them It Would Be Night in Caracas is her first work in unexpected ways .But the city is of fiction. 1826, and all of London is in a frenzy. changing. As it does, it pushes her Crowds gather at the gates of the Old to the margins where she chances is the author of a book and Bailey to watch as Frannie Langton, Elizabeth Bryer upon a series of apparent strangers the translator of a few of them .Her debut maid to Mr and Mrs Benham, goes on – from a homeless man squatting novel From Here On, Monsters is out now trial for their murder. The testimonies in an abandoned hotel, to a shut-in with Picador Australia. It was joint winner of against her are damning - slave, whore, hermit afraid to leave his house, to a the 2020 Norma K Hemming Award seductress. And they may be the truth. convenience store worker searching for She has translated novels from Spanish by But they are not the whole truth.For the love. The cat orbits Tokyo’s denizens, Peruvian-, Chilean-, Colombian-, Venezuelan-, first time Frannie must tell her story. drawing them ever closer. Mallorcan- and Polish-born authors, including Aleksandra Lun’s The Palimpsests, It begins with a girl learning to read Nick Bradley is a graduate of the UEA awarded a PEN/Heim Translation fund grant on a plantation in Jamaica, and it ends Creative Writing MA who is currently from PEN America in 2017; Claudia Salazar in a grand house in London, where a completing a PhD in Creative & Critical Jiménez’s Americas Prize–winning Blood of beautiful woman waits to be freed. Writing, focussing on the figure of the cat in the Dawn, described in the New York Times But through her fevered confessions, Japanese literature. Book Review as a ‘brave, breviloquent debut one burning question haunts Frannie novel’; and José Luis de Juan’s Napoleon’s Langton: could she have murdered the only person she ever loved? Beekeeper. María José Ferrada’s How to Available to borrow on Borrowbox Order the Universe is forthcoming from Tin from DublinCity Libraries/Public A haunting tale about one woman’s House Books in early 2021. Libraries Ireland. fight to tell her story, The Confessions of Frannie Langton leads you through Available to borrow on Borrowbox . laudanum-laced dressing rooms and from DublinCity Libraries/Public dark-as-night alleys, into the heart of Libraries Ireland. Georgian London.

Sara Collins studied law at the London School of Economics and worked as a lawyer for seventeen years. In 2014 she embarked upon the Creative Writing Masters at Cambridge University, where she won the 2015 Michael Holroyd Prize of Re-creative Writing and was shortlisted for the 2016 Lucy Cavendish Prize for a book inspired by her love of gothic fiction. This turned into her first novel, The Confessions of Frannie Langton.

3 dublinliteraryaward.ie Available to borrow as an eBook on His fourth novel, Sweetland, was also a Martin Michael Driessen is a Dutch opera Borrowbox from DublinCity finalist for the Governor General’s Literary and theatre director, translator, and writer. Libraries/Public Libraries Ireland. Award. His most recent novel, The Innocents, He made his debut in 1999 with the novel was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Gars, followed by Vader van God (Father of Prize, the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction God, 2012) and Een ware held (A True Hero, Prize and the Governor General’s Literary 2013), both of which were broadly reviewed The Innocents Award. Michael Crummey lives in St. John’s, and nominated for literary prizes. In 2015 Michael Crummey Newfoundland. his novel Lizzie, written with the highly ac- claimed and award-winning poet Liesbeth Nominated by: Available to borrow as on Lagemaat, was published under the pseudo- Ottawa Public Library, Canada Borrowbox from DublinCity nym Eva Wanjek. Rivieren (Rivers, 2016) was Libraries/Public Libraries Ireland.

THE 2021 LONGLIST Newfoundland & Labrador Public awarded the prestigious ECI Literature Prize Libraries, Canada (formerly the AKO), the Readers Prize, and the Inktaap Prize, shortlisted for the Fintro ‘A brother and sister The Pelican: a comedy Literature Prize, and nominated for the are orphaned in an Martin Michael Driessen Halewijn Prize. His latest novel, De pelikaan isolated cove on (The Pelican, 2017), was shortlisted for the Newfoundland’s Libris Prize. His work has been translated Translated from the Dutch by Jonathan northern coastline. Reeder into English, Italian, German, Spanish, Slove- Still children with nian, and Hungarian. only the barest Nominated by: Jonathan Reeder - a native of upstate New notion of the Utrecht Public Library, Netherlands York and longtime resident of Amsterdam, outside world, they KB National Library of the Netherlands, have nothing but I enjoy a dual career as a literary translator and performing musician. Alongside my the family’s boat In a quiet coastal work as a professional bassoonist I translate and the little knowledge passed on town in Yugoslavia, opera libretti and essays on classical music, haphazardly by their mother and father two men seeking as well as contemporary Dutch and Flemish to keep them alive. more than the fiction and non-fiction. I am endorsed by Communist regime Flanders Literature, the Dutch Foundation Still, they muddle through the severe can offer find their for Literature, and the Expertise Center for round of the seasons, through years lives deceitfully Literary Translation. of meagre catches and storms and entwined. Andrej ravaging illness, their fierce loyalty to is a postman in each other motivates and sustains them. complete denial Available to borrow as on Borrowbox from DublinCity But as seasons pass and they wade of his existence. Libraries/Public Libraries Ireland. deeper into the mystery of their own He yearns for respect and fame but natures, even that loyalty will be tested. commits petty crimes for reasons he doesn’t fully comprehend. Josip is Richly imagined and compulsively an increasingly irrelevant cable car readable, prizewinning author Michael operator and unfaithfully married. Life Crummey’s The Innocents is a riveting was so much simpler when neither one story of hardship and survival, and an knew the other’s secrets. Now that they unflinching exploration of the bond do—discovered quite by accident—each between brother and sister. By turns man has resorted to blackmailing the electrifying and heartbreaking, it is a other. As their anonymous misdeeds testament to the bounty and barbarity escalate, a farce of mutual dependency of the world, to the wonders and begins. So does the unlikeliest of strangeness of our individual selves. friendships when Andrej and Josip finally meet face-to-face . Michael Crummey is author of the memoir Newfoundland: Journey into a Lost Nation; In a tale set against the impending three books of poetry, including Arguments wars, Martin Michael Driessen ingen- with Gravity, winner of the Writers’ Alliance iously explores the foibles of two pain- of Newfoundland and Labrador Book Award fully ordinary men boldly staking their for Poetry; and the short fiction collection claims on life. Flesh & Blood. His first novel, River Thieves, was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and his second novel, The Wreckage, was a was a finalist for the Rogers Writers’ Trust

dublinliteraryaward.ie 4 Catacombs Girl, Woman, Other The Other Name: Septology 1-11 Mary Anna Evans Bernardine Evaristo Jon Fosse

Nominated by: Nominated by: Translated from the Norwegian by Damion Oklahoma Department of Libraries, Zentral-und Landesbibliothek Berlin, Searles United States Germany Waterford City & County Libraries, Nominated by: What secrets lie Ireland Sфlvberget Library & Culture Centre, deep beneath Norway the surface? A This is Britain as THE 2021 LONGLIST deafening explosion you’ve never read The Other Name rocks a historic it.This is Britain as it follows the lives Oklahoma City has never been told. of two men living hotel, sending From Newcastle close to each other archaeologist to Cornwall, from on the west coast Faye Longchamp- the birth of the of Norway. The Mantooth crashing twentieth century year is coming to to the marble floor to the teens of a close and Asle, of the lobby. She’s unhurt but shaken— the twenty-first, an aging painter after all, any time something blows Girl, Woman, Other and widower, up in Oklahoma City, the first word on follows a cast of twelve characters on is reminiscing everyone’s lips is the same: bomb. their personal journeys through this about his life. He lives alone, his only country and the last hundred years. friends being his neighbor, Åsleik, a Faye is in town for a conference They’re each looking for something - a bachelor and traditional Norwegian celebrating indigenous arts, but is shared past, an unexpected future, a fisherman-farmer, and Beyer, a gallerist soon distracted by the aftermath of place to call home, somewhere to fit in, who lives in Bjørgvin, a couple hours’ the explosion, which cracks open the a lover, a missed mother, a lost father, drive south of Dylgja, where he lives. old hotel’s floor to reveal subterranean even just a touch of hope . . . There, in Bjørgvin, lives another Asle, chambers that had housed Chinese also a painter. He and the narrator are immigrants a century before. Faye is Bernardine Evaristo, MBE, is the award- doppelgangers—two versions of the fascinated by the tunnels, which are winning author of eight books of fiction same person, two versions of the same a time capsule back to the early 20th and verse fiction that explore aspects life.Written in hypnotic prose that shifts century—but when the bodies of three of the African diaspora. Her novel Girl, between the first and third person, children are discovered deep beneath Woman, Other made her the first black The Other Name calls into question the city, her sense of discovery turns woman to win the Booker Prize in 2019, concrete notions around subjectivity to one of dread…Winner of the 2020 as well winning the Fiction Book of the and the self. What makes us who we Oklahoma Book Award. Year Award at the British Book Awards in are? And why do we lead one life and 2020, where she also won Author of the not another? Mary Anna Evans is the author of the Faye Year, and the Indie Book Award. She also Longchamp archaeological mysteries, which became the first woman of colour and Jon Fosse’s remarkably prolific career have received recognition including the black British writer to reach No.1 in the began in 1983 with his first novel, Red, Benjamin Franklin Award, the Mississippi UK paperback fiction chart in 2020. Her Black, and since then he has published Author Award, and three Florida Book writing spans reviews, essays, drama and numerous novels, stories, books of poetry, Awards bronze medals. She is an assistant radio, and she has edited and guest-edited children’s books, and essay collections. He professor at the University of Oklahoma, national publications, including The Sunday began writing plays in 1993, with Someone where she teaches fiction and nonfiction Time’s Style magazine. Her other awards Is Going to Come, and since the mid- and honours include an MBE in 2009. nineties his plays have had unparalleled Available to borrow on Borrowbox Bernardine is Professor of Creative Writing international success, being performed from DublinCity Libraries/Public at Brunel University, London, and Vice Chair over a thousand times all over the world; Libraries Ireland. of the Royal Society of Literature. She lives his works have been translated into more in London with her husband. than fifty languages .Today, Fosse is one of the most performed living playwrights, but Available to borrow on Borrowbox he has continued to write novels, stories, from DublinCity Libraries/Public and poetry of exceptional quality. In 2015 Libraries Ireland. he received the Nordic Council Literature Prize for his work Trilogy, consisting of Wakefulness, Olav’s Dreams, and Weariness.

5 dublinliteraryaward.ie Fosse has been awarded numerous prizes realities of growing up in today’s world; Through these stories – of unspoken both in Norway and abroad, and in recent Rafi, with his desperate attempt to help joy and regret, a secret tragedy kept years he has often been mentioned as a someone in need; and Cinta, an old hidden, a fierce love that never found frontrunner for the Nobel Prize in Literature. friend who provides the missing link in its voice – the life of one man will be The three books that comprise his magnum the story they are all a part of. powerfully and poignantly laid bare. opus, Septology, will be published by Transit Heart-breaking and heart-warming all Books, beginning with The Other Name (tr. It is a journey which will upend at once, the voice of Maurice Hannigan Damion Searls) in April 2020. everything he thought he knew about will stay with you long after all is said. himself, about the Bengali legends Damion Searls has translated several books of his childhood and about the world Anne Griffin’s first novel, When All is Said and a libretto by Jon Fosse—Septology, around him. Gun Island is a beautifully was a Number One Irish bestseller in 2019

THE 2021 LONGLIST Melancholy (co-translated with Grethe realised novel which effortlessly and chosen as the Sunday Independent Kvernes), Aliss at the Fire, Morning and spans space and time. It is the story Newcomer of the Year in the An Post Irish Evening (novel and libretto), and Scenes of a world on the brink, of increasing Book Awards. It was also shortlisted for the from a Childhood—and books by many other displacement and unstoppable John McGahern Annual Book and the RSL classic modern writers, including Proust, transition. But it is also a story of hope, Christopher Bland prizes. She lives in Co. Rilke, Nietzsche, Walser, Bachmann, Jelinek, of a man whose faith in the world Westmeath, Ireland. Modiano, and Uwe Johnson. His own books and the future is restored by two include What We Were Doing and Where remarkable women. We Were Going, The Inkblots, and The Amitav Ghosh was born in Calcutta and The Eighth Life: ( for Brilka ) grew up in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nino Haratischwili Available to borrow on Borrowbox India. He studied at the universities of from DublinCity Libraries/Public Delhi and Oxford, has taught at a number Translated from the German by Charlotte Libraries Ireland. of institutions and written for many Collins and Ruth Martin magazines. The first novel in the Ibis trilogy, Sea of Poppies, was shortlisted for the Man Nominated by: Booker Prize in 2008. In 2015, Amitav Ghosh Openbare Bibliotheek Brugge ( Bruges Public Library ), Belgium Gun Island was named as a finalist of the Man Booker Amitav Ghosh International Prize. That night Stasia Nominated by: Biblioteca Nazionale Di took an oath, Napoli Vittorio Emmanuele 111, Italy swearing to learn When All Is Said the recipe by heart Bundook. Gun. A Anne Griffin and destroy the common word, but paper. And when one which turns Nominated by: she was lying in Deen Datta’s world Wojewódzka Biblioteka Publiczna im. her bed again, upside down.A Marszałka Józefa Piłsudskiego w Łodzi, recalling the taste dealer of rare books, Łódź, Poland with all her senses, Deen is used to she was sure that a quiet life spent I’m here to this secret recipe could heal wounds, indoors, but as his remember – all that avert catastrophes, and bring people once-solid beliefs I have been and all happiness. But she was wrong.’At the begin to shift, he is that I will never be start of the twentieth century, on forced to set out on an extraordinary again.’ the edge of the Russian Empire, a journey; one that takes him from India family prospers. It owes its success to to Los Angeles and Venice via a tangled At the bar of a a delicious chocolate recipe, passed route through the memories and grand hotel in a down the generations with great experiences of those he meets along small Irish town solemnity and caution. A caution the way. sits 84-year-old which is justified: this is a recipe for Maurice Hannigan. ecstasy : this is a recipe for ecstasy that There is Piya, a fellow Bengali- He’s alone, as usual -though tonight carries a very bitter aftertaste …Stasia American who sets his journey in is anything but. Pull up a stool and learns it from her Georgian father motion; Tipu, an entrepreneurial young charge your glass, because Maurice is and takes it north, following her new man who opens Deen’s eyes to the finally ready to tell his story. Over the husband, Simon, to his posting at the course of this evening, he will raise centre of the Russian Revolution in St five toasts to the five people who have Petersburg. Stasia’s is only the first in a meant the most to him. symphony of grand but all too often

dublinliteraryaward.ie 6 doomed romances that swirl from This is a novel dominated by historical sweet to sour in this epic tale of the facts related to the war period red century.Tumbling down the years, Beyond Yamashita and Percival Shaari Isa interlaced with fictional events related and across vast expanses of longing to the life and the loves of the fictional and loss, generation after generation characters during the war. It carries a Translated from the Malay by Shaari Isa of this compelling family hears echoes message about the meaninglessness and sees reflections. of war; that pride of the victor is Nominated by: just temporary and trivial but the Nino Haratischvili was born in Georgia in Perpustakaan Negara Malaysia, Malaysia human suffering caused by the war is 1983, and is an award-winning novelist, unfathomable and simply unforgivable. playwright, and theatre director. At home This novel is in two different worlds, each with their set against the Shaari Isa has equal love for academic THE 2021 LONGLIST own language, she has been writing in background of the and creative writings. He began his career both German and Georgian since the age Malay Peninsula and as a teacher and subsequently became a of twelve. In 2010, her debut novel Juja Singapore during professional accountant and a university was nominated for the German Book Prize, the Second World lecturer. His writings reflects his deep as was her most recent Die Katze und der years of 1941 to concern for social order, clear thinking and General in 2018. In its German edition, 1945. As implied human happiness. He lives in Kuala Lumpur. The Eighth Life was a bestseller, and won from the title, is is the Anna Seghers Prize, the Lessing Prize not merely a story Stipend, and the Bertolt Brecht Prize 2018. about two generals, Tyll It is being translated into many languages, Yamashita and Percival, but also the Daniel Kehlmann and has already been a major bestseller on effect of their decisions upon the lives publication in Holland, Poland, and Georgia. of people who were caught in the war Translated from the German by Ross the British residents and the locals of Benjamin Charlotte Collins studied English Literature diverse cultures. at Cambridge University, and worked as Nominated by: an actor and radio journalist in Germany The novel focuses on the theme of Münchner Stadtbibliothek, Germany and the UK before becoming a literary love and war. It discusses the frailties translator. She received the Goethe- of human emotion that led to both. Stadtbibilothek Bremen, Germany Institut’s Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator’s It portrays the lives of the various Prize in 2017 for Robert Seethaler’s A Whole societies there at the time before, He’s a trickster, a Life, which was also shortlisted for the during and after the outbreak of the player, a jester. His Man Booker International Prize and the war: first the British, the elite society handshake’s like a International Dublin Literary Award. Her during the colonial years with their pact with the devil, other translations include Seethaler’s The comfortable life, quite ignorant of his smile like a Tobacconist and The End of Loneliness by Japanese clandestine activities, which crack in the clouds; Benedict Wells. were to have such a profound effect on he’s watching you their lives soon after. Amidst all these now and he’s gone Ruth Martin has a PhD in German literature the novel also portrays the love, illicit when you turn. and philosophy from the University of and otherwise that inevitably grew out Tyll Ulenspiegel London. Her recent translations include the events related to the war. is here!In a Volker Weidermann’s Dreamers, Michael village like every other village in Köhlmeier’s novels Two Gentlemen on the In addition, the novel also looks at Germany, a scrawny boy balances Beach and Yiza, short fiction by Joseph other parts of the social environment, on a rope between two trees. He’s Roth, and essays by Hannah Arendt. She has at the effects of the war on the local practising. He practises by the mill, by taught translation to undergraduates at population: the Malays who saw the the blacksmiths; he practises in the Birkbeck and the University of Kent, and is war as an opportunity to prepare forest at night, where the Cold Woman currently co-chair of the Society of Authors themselves towards self-government whispers and goblins roam. When he Translators Association. and independence; the Chinese who comes out, he will never be the same. looked upon the Japanese as their Tyll will escape the ordinary villages. Available to borrow on Borrowbox bitter enemies for invading their In the mines he will defy death. On from DublinCity Libraries/Public homeland, China, and who must the battlefield he will run faster than Libraries Ireland. opposed at all costs; the Indians who cannonballs. In the courts he will were indifferent to all events around trick the heads of state. As a travelling them; their main concern being to earn entertainer, his journey will take him just enough for themselves and for across the land and into the heart of their families back home in India. a never-ending war.A prince’s doomed acceptance of the Bohemian throne

7 dublinliteraryaward.ie has European armies lurching brutally The Frequencies, and a commendation from sadistic skill for undermining himself for dominion and now the Winter King the judges of the 2012 Schlegel-Tieck Prize and his marriage comes to cost him nearly casts a sunless pall. for his translation of Thomas Pletzinger’s everything. Funeral for a Dog (W.W. Norton & Company, Between the quests of fat counts, 2011). His literary criticism has appeared in Herman Koch was born in 1953. He is the witch-hunters and scheming queens, The Times Literary Supplement, Bookforum, author of a number of novels - including Tyll dances his mocking fugue; The Nation, and other publications. He was The Dinner, Dear Mr. M and Summer House exposing the folly of kings and a 2003–2004 Fulbright Scholar in Berlin with Swimming Pool - short stories, has the wisdom of fools.With macabre and is a graduate of Vassar College. acted for radio, television, and film, and was humour and moving humanity, Daniel a co-creator of the long-running Dutch TV Kehlmann lifts this legend from comedy series Jiskefet (1990-2005). The

THE 2021 LONGLIST medieval German folklore and enters Dinner has sold over 2.5 million copies him on the stage of the Thirty Years’ The Ditch Herman Koch worldwide and spent a year on the New War. York Times bestseller list. Richard Gere, Steve Coogan, Laura Linney, and Chloë Translated from the Dutch by Sam Garrett When citizens become the playthings Sevigny also star in the film adaptation. of politics and puppetry, Tyll, in his Nominated by: demonic grace and his thirst for Sam Garrett is the translator of some OBA-Amsterdam Public Library, freedom, is the very spirit of rebellion thirty novels and works of non-fiction. He – a cork in water, a laugh in the dark, a Netherlands is the only translator to have twice won hero for all time. the British Society of Authors’ Vondel Prize When Robert for Dutch-English translation. In 2012, Daniel Kehlmann was born in Munich Walter, the his translation of The Dinner by Herman in 1975 and lives in Vienna, Berlin and popular mayor of Koch spent two months on the New York New York. He has published six novels: Amsterdam, sees Times bestseller list and became the most Measuring the World, Me & Kaminski, his wife toss her popular Dutch novel ever translated into Fame, F, You Should Have Left and Tyll and head back with English. His work has been shortlisted for has won numerous prizes, including the laughter while the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Candide Prize, the Literature Prize of the chatting to one Award, the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Konrad Adenauer Foundation, the Doderer of his aldermen Award, the PEN Translation Prize and the Prize, The Kleist Prize, the WELT Literature at a New Year’s Best Translated Book Award. He divides his Prize, and the Thomas Mann Prize. reception, he time between Amsterdam and the French Measuring the World was translated into immediately suspects she is cheating Pyrenees. more than forty languages and is one of on him. the biggest successes in post-war German Available to borrow on Borrowbox literature. Though happily married, he has always from DublinCity Libraries/Public wondered why Sylvia, born and raised Libraries Ireland. Ross Benjamin is a translator of German- in a distant country, chose him.Soon language literature and a writer living in afterwards, a journalist unearths an Nyack, New York.His translations include old photograph of a police officer While The Music Played Friedrich Hölderlin’s Hyperion (Archipelago being beaten up by three Vietnam War Nathaniel Lande Books, 2008), Kevin Vennemann’s Close to protesters, one of whom she claims is Jedenew (Melville House, 2008), Joseph Robert. Just as unexpectedly, Robert’s Nominated by: Roth’s Job (Archipelago, 2010), Clemens J. ninety-four-year-old father announces Katona József Library of Bács-Kiscun Setz’s Indigo (Liveright/Norton, 2014), and that he and his wife would rather end County, Hungary Daniel Kehlmann’s You Should Have Left their lives than burden their son with (Pantheon, 2017) and Tyll (Pantheon, 2020). their deteriorating health. Beginning in 1939 prewar Prague, He is currently at work on a translation Once stable and successful, Robert While the Music of Franz Kafka’s complete Diaries, to be becomes entangled in his fears and Played focuses on published by Schocken Books. He is a suspicions, consumed by jealousy and the story of young 2015 Guggenheim Fellow. His translation paranoia. Nothing is what it seems, or Max Mueller, a of Tyll has been shortlisted for the 2020 is Robert finally beginning to see the curious bright International Booker Prize. He was awarded world - and his life - as they are, for the romantic—a budding the 2010 Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator’s first time?Written with Herman Koch’s musician, piano Prize for his rendering of Michael Maar’s trademark originality, playfulness and tuner, and nascent Speak, Nabokov (Verso Books, 2009), a 2012 edge and translated from Dutch, The journalist. Max is on National Endowment for the Arts Literature Ditch is a wildly clever - and guttingly the cusp of adolescence when the Nazi Fellowship to translate Clemens J. Setz’s familiar - story of a man whose influence invades Prague’s tolerant

dublinliteraryaward.ie 8 spirit with alarming speed as he and theory of the novel. He has given struggles to understand the changing talks at universities throughout Europe world around him. When his father, Until Stones Become Lighter as well as in China and contributed to noted German conductor Viktor Than Water the Philosophical Salon at the LA Review Mueller, is conscripted into the German António Lobo Antunes of Books. He has been awarded, among army and finds himself increasingly others, the John E. Sawyer Fellowship at Translated from the Portugese by Jeff Love promoting the Nazi message, Viktor’s the National Humanities Center (2014- best friend, noted Czech composer 2015), the University Research Scholarship Nominated by: Hans Krása, protests the occupation in and Artistic Achievement Award (2018) Porto Public Libraries, Portugal every way he can. at Clemson University and the Whiting Fellowship in the Humanities (1997-1998)

As everyone Max loves is compromised Award-winning while at Yale University. THE 2021 LONGLIST by intolerable conditions, he becomes author António Lobo Antunes increasingly isolated, and is forced to find his own way. With each step, Max’s returns to the journey grows more conflicted. Music subject of the Lost Children Archive is the one constant connecting him to Portuguese colonial Valeria Luiselli both the lost childhood he cherishes war in Angola and the man he still hopes to become. with a vigorous Nominated by: But will it be enough to sustain him account of atrocity Biblioteca Vila de Gràcia, Spain against the relentless Nazi threat? and vengeance. Drawing on his In Valeria Luiselli’s With a seamless blend of historical and own bitter experience as a soldier fiercely imaginative fictional characters, told from multiple stationed for twenty-seven months in follow-up to the points of view, and sweeping across the Angola, Lobo Antunes tells the story American Book capitals of Prague, London, and Berlin of a young African boy who is brought Award-winning Tell to Portugal by one of the soldiers who Me How It Ends, an as World War II ravages Europe, this meticulously researched book is unique destroyed the child’s village, and of the artist couple set with its diverse and interweaving boy’s subsequent brutal murder of this out with their two narratives, threaded with news adoptive father figure at a ritual pig children on a road accounts, and encompassing some of killing. trip from New York the most triumphant and devastating to Arizona in the moments of the war—from the opera Deftly framing the events through an heat of summer. As the family travels houses of Berlin to the music halls of assembly of interwoven narratives west, the bonds between them begin to London and the making of the famous and perspectives, this is one of fray: a fracture is growing between the children’s opera Brundibár. Lobo Antunes’s most captivating parents, one the children can almost and experimental books. It is also a feel beneath their feet. Nathaniel Lande is a journalist, filmmaker, timely consideration of the lingering and the author of twelve books, including wounds that remain from the conflict Through ephemera such as songs, maps Cricket and Dispatches from the Front: A between European expansionism and and a Polaroid camera, the children try History of the American War Correspondent. its colonized victims who were forced to make sense of both their family’s A full listing of his works can be found at to accept the norms of a supposedly crisis and the larger one engulfing the www.NathanielLande.com. He was creative supposedly superior culture. news: the stories of thousands of kids director for the Magazine Group at Time, trying to cross the southwestern border Inc.; director of Time World News Service; António Lobo Antunes is the author of into the United States but getting director of Time-Life Films, where his more than thirty books, including Fado detained—or lost in the desert along documentaries won over ten international Alexandrino, The Inquisitors’ Manual, and the way. awards; and executive producer at CBS The Splendor of Portugal. He lives in and NBC Television. Lande was educated Lisbon. A breath-taking feat of literary at Oxford University; earned his doctorate virtuosity, Lost Children Archive is at Trinity College Dublin, where he Jeff Love, Research Professor of German timely, compassionate, subtly hilarious, was a Distinguished Scholar; and held and Russian at Clemson University, has and formally inventive—a powerful, appointments as professor of journalism at published three monographs, edited two urgent story about what it is to be the University of North Carolina at Chapel collections of articles and translated three human in an inhuman world. Hill. He lives in Santa Barbara, California. books, two philosophical treatises, one German, the other Russian, and a novel by Valeria Luiselli was born in Mexico City and Available to borrow on Borrowbox renowned Portuguese author António Lobo grew up in South Korea, South Africa and from DublinCity Libraries/Public Antunes. Professor Love’s primary research India. An acclaimed writer of both fiction Libraries Ireland. fields are German and Russianphilosophy and nonfiction, she is the author of the

9 dublinliteraryaward.ie essay collection Sidewalks; the novels Faces eventually raise him as one of their Available to borrow on Borrowbox in the Crowd and The Story of My Teeth; and, own. A circus performer who toured the from DublinCity Libraries/Public most recently, Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay world as a sideshow introduces the boy Libraries Ireland. in Forty Questions. She is the winner of to showmanship and sanitation. And a two Los Angeles Times Book Prizes and an chance encounter with an older woman American Book Award, and has twice been exposes him to music and the sensuous nominated for the National Book Critics Auē pleasures of life. The boy becomes Becky Manawatu Circle Award and the Kirkus Prize. She has a guide whose innocence exposes been a National Book Foundation “5 Under society’s wonder, brutality, absurdity, Nominated by: 35” honoree and the recipient of a Bearing and magic. Christchurch city Libraries, New Zealand Witness Fellowship from the Art for Justice Auckland Libraries, New Zealand THE 2021 LONGLIST Fund. Her work has appeared in The New Beginning in 1908 and spanning three York Times, Granta, and McSweeney’s, among decades, The Boy is as an emotionally Taukiri was born other publications, and has been translated and historically rich exploration of into sorrow. Auē into more than twenty languages. She lives family, passion, and war from one can be heard in the in New York City. of France’s most acclaimed and sound of the sea bestselling authors. he loves and hates, Available to borrow on Borrowbox and in the music from DublinCity Libraries/Public Marcus Malte was born in 1967 in he draws out of Libraries Ireland. Seyne-sur-Mer, a small harbor city in the guitar that was the south of France, along the coast of his father’s. It spills the Mediterranean Sea. As a child, Malte out of the gang immersed himself in literature, discovering The Boy violence that killed the novels of John Steinbeck, Albert Cohen, Marcus Malte his father and sent his mother into Louis-Ferdinand Céline and Jean Giono. hiding, and the shame he feels about He began writing in elementary school Translated from the French by Emma abandoning his eight-year-old brother and chose to major in film studies after Ramadan and Tom Roberge to a violent home. graduating from high school. At twenty- three, Malte became a projectionist in Nominated by: But Ārama is braver than he looks, and Seyne-sur-Mer’s historical movie theater Bibliothèque municipale de Colmar, he has a friend and his friend has a and soon wrote his first short stories. Later France dog, and the three of them together in the 1990s he began reaching broader might just be strong enough to turn audience with a series of novels, a couple The boy does not back the tide of sorrow. As long as of hard-boiled detective stories where speak. The boy has there’s aroha to give and stories to tell Malte created the recurrent character of no name. The boy, and a good supply of plasters. Mister, a jazz pianist .Marcus Malte’s fiction raised half-wild includes Garden of Love his first real in the forests of Becky Manawatu (Ngāi Tahu) was born in success (rewarded with a dozen literary southern France, Nelson, raised in Waimangaroa and has prizes, including the Grand Prix of the sets out alone into returned there to live with her family, readers of Elle, police category, 2007) Les the wilderness and working as a reporter for The News in Harmoniques (Prix Mystère de la Critique, the greater world Westport. Becky’s short story ‘Abalone’ was 2012) and more recently Le Garçon (The beyond. Without long-listed for the 2018 Commonwealth Boy) for which he received the famous Prix experience of Short Story Prize, her essay ‘Mothers Day’ Femina (2016). The Boy is his first novel to another person aside from his mother, was selected for the Landfall anthology be translated into English. the boy must learn what it is to be Strong Words. Auē is her first novel. human, to exist among people, and to Emma Ramadan is a literary translator live beyond simple survival. based in Providence, RI, where she is the co-owner of Riffraff, a bookstore and bar. As this wild and naive child attempts She is the recipient of an NEA Translation to join civilization, he encounters Fellowship, a PEN/Heim grant, and a earthquakes and car crashes, ogres Fulbright scholarship. and artists, and, eventually, all- encompassing love and an inescapable Tom Roberge is co-owner of Riffraff war. His adventures take him around bookstore and bar in Providence, Rhode the world and through history on Island. He learned French as a Peace Corps a mesmerizing journey, rich with volunteer in Madagascar and was formerly unforgettable characters. A hamlet of the Deputy Director of Albertine Books, a farmers fears he’s a werewolf, but French language bookstore in New York.

dublinliteraryaward.ie 10 The Glass Hotel Apeirogon Hurricane Season Emily St. John Mandel Colum McCann Fernanda Melchor

Nominated by: Nominated by: Translated from the Spanish by Sophie Limerick City and County Library, South Dublin Libraries, Ireland Hughes Ireland Nominated by: Vincent is the Rami Elhanan and Winnipeg Public Library, Canada beautiful bartender Bassam Aramin live Biblioteca Daniel Cosío Villegs, Mexico at the Hotel near one another THE 2021 LONGLIST Caiette, a five-star – yet they exist Los Angeles Public Library, United glass-and-cedar worlds apart. Rami States palace on the is Israeli. Bassam is northernmost tip of Palestinian. Rami’s The Witch is dead. Vancouver Island. license plate is And the discovery New York financier yellow. Bassam’s of her corpse—by a Jonathan Alkaitis license plate is group of children owns the hotel. green. It takes Rami playing near the When he passes Vincent his card with fifteen minutes to drive to the West irrigation canals— a tip, it’s the beginning of their life Bank. The same journey for Bassam propels the whole together. takes an hour and a half. village into an investigation of That same day, a hooded figure Both men have lost their daughters. how and why this scrawls a note on the windowed Rami’s thirteen-year-old girl Smadar murder occurred. wall of the hotel: ‘Why don’t you was killed by a suicide bomber Rumors and suspicions spread. As the swallow broken glass.’ Leon Prevant, while out shopping with her friends. novel unfolds in a dazzling linguistic a shipping executive for a company Bassam’s ten-year-old daughter Abir torrent, with each unreliable narrator called Neptune-Avramidis, sees the was shot and killed by a member of lingering details, new acts of depravity note from the hotel bar and is shaken the border police outside her school. or brutality, Melchor extracts some to his core. Thirteen years later, just There was a candy bracelet in her tiny shred of humanity from these after a massive Ponzi scheme implodes pocket she hadn’t had time to eat yet. characters that most would write off as in New York, Vincent mysteriously The men become the best of friends. utterly irredeemable, forming a lasting disappears from the deck of a portrait of a damned Mexican village. Neptune-Avramidis ship. In this epic novel – named for a shape with a countably infinite number Fernanda Melchor, born in Veracruz, Mexico, Weaving together the lives of these of sides – Colum McCann crosses in 1982,is widely recognized as one of characters, Emily St. John Mandel’s The centuries and continents, stitching the most exciting new voices of Mexican Glass Hotel moves between the ship, time, art, history, nature and politics literature. Her novel Hurricane Season the towers of Manhattan, and the into a tapestry of friendship, love, loss and collection This Is Not Miami are both wilderness of remote British Columbia, and belonging. Musical, muscular, forthcoming from New Directions.. painting a breathtaking picture of delicate and soaring, Apeirogon is the greed and guilt, fantasy and delusion, novel for our times. Sophie Hughes is a literary translator art and the ghosts of our pasts. from Spanish, known for her translations Colum McCann, originally from Dublin, of writers such as Laia Jufresa, Rodrigo Emily St. John Mandel was born in Canada Ireland, is the author of six novels and two Hasbún, Fernanda Melchor and José and studied dance at The School of Toronto collections of stories. His most recent novel, Revueltas. In 2019 she was shortlisted for Dance Theatre. Her novels are Last Night the New York Times bestseller Let the the Man Booker International Prize for her in Montreal, The Singer’s Gun, The Lola Great World Spin, won the National Book translation of Alia Trabucco Zerán’s The Quartet, Station Eleven and The Glass Award, the International IMPAC Dublin Remainder. Hotel. She lives in New York City with her Literary Award and several other major husband and daughter. international awards. His fiction has been published in thirty-five languages. He lives Available to borrow on Borrowbox from DublinCity Libraries/Public Available to borrow on Borrowbox Libraries Ireland. from DublinCity Libraries/Public Libraries Ireland.

11 dublinliteraryaward.ie Heather Morris is a native of New Zealand, now resident in Australia. For several years, The Silent Patient Cilka’s Journey Alex Michaelides Heather Morris while working in a large public hospital in Melbourne, she studied and wrote screenplays, one of which was optioned by Nominated by: Nominated by: an Academy Award-winning screenwriter in Veria Central Public Library, Greece State Library Victoria, Australia the US.

In 2003, Heather was introduced to an Alicia Berenson’s In 1942 Cilka elderly gentleman who ‘might just have a life is seemingly is just sixteen story worth telling’. The day she met Lale perfect. A years old when

THE 2021 LONGLIST Sokolov changed both their lives, as their famous painter she is taken to friendship grew and he embarked on a married to an in- Auschwitz-Birkenau journey on self-scrutiny, entrusting the demand fashion Concentration innermost details of his life during the photographer, Camp. The Holocaust to her. Heather originally wrote she lives in a Commandant Lale’s story as a screenplay – which ranked grand house with at Birkenau, high in international competitions – before big windows Schwarzhuber, reshaping it into her debut novel, The overlooking a park notices her long Tattooist of Auschwitz. in one of London’s most desirable beautiful hair, and forces her separation areas. from the other women prisoners. Cilka learns quickly that power, even Available to borrow on Borrowbox One evening her husband Gabriel unwillingly given, equals survival. from DublinCity Libraries/Public Libraries Ireland. returns home late from a fashion shoot, and Alicia shoots him five times After liberation, Cilka is charged in the face, and then never speaks as a collaborator for sleeping with another word.Alicia’s refusal to talk, or the enemy and sent to a desolate, Dark Mother Earth give any kind of explanation, turns a brutal prison camp in Siberia known Kristian Novak domestic tragedy into something far as Vorkuta, inside the Arctic Circle. grander, a mystery that captures the Innocent and imprisoned once again, Translated from the Croatian by Ellen public imagination and casts Alicia Cilka faces challenges both new and Elias-Bursac into notoriety. The price of her art horribly familiar. When she makes an skyrockets, and she, the silent patient, impression on a female doctor, Cilka Nominated by: is hidden away from the tabloids and is taken under her wing and begins to Gradska knjižnica Rijeka, Croatia spotlight at the Grove, a secure forensic tend to the ill in the camp, struggling unit in North London. to care for them under unimaginable An amnesiac conditions. writer’s life of Theo Faber is a criminal lies and false psychotherapist who has waited a Cilka finds endless resources within memories reaches long time for the opportunity to work herself as she confronts death and a breaking point with Alicia. His determination to get faces terror, each day a battle for in this stunning her to talk and unravel the mystery of survival. And when she nurses a man English-language why she shot her husband takes him called Aleksandr, Cilka finds that debut from an down a twisting path into his own despite everything that has happened award-winning motivations—a search for the truth that to her, there is room in her heart for Croatian author. As threatens to consume him. love. a novelist, Matija makes things up for a living. Not yet Alex Michaelides was born in Cyprus to Based on what is known of Cilka’s time thirty, he’s written two well-received a Greek-Cypriot father and an English in Auschwitz, and on the experience books. It’s his third that is as big a mother. He studied English literature at of women in Siberian prison camps, failure as his private life. Unable to Cambridge University and got his MA Cilka’s Journey is the breathtaking confine his fabrications to fiction, he’s in screenwriting at the American Film sequel to The Tattooist of Auschwitz. A been abandoned by his girlfriend over Institute in Los Angeles. He is the author powerful testament to triumph of the his lies. But all Matija has is invention. of the international bestseller The Silent human will in adversity, Cilka’s Journey Especially when it comes to his Patient. will make you weep, but it will also childhood and the death of his father. leave you with the remarkable story of Whatever happened to Matija as a one woman’s fierce determination to young boy, he can’t remember. He feels survive, against all odds. rightened, angry, and responsible…

dublinliteraryaward.ie 12 Now, after years of burying and Stark and penetrating, Joyce Carol longing in an unexpected relationship reinventing his past, Matija must Oates’s latest novel is a vivid that inspires a momentous expedition confront it. Longing for connection, he exploration of race, psychological across the West. The way in which might even win back the love of his trauma, class warfare, grief, and Lurie’s death-defying trek at last life. But discovering the profound fears eventual healing, as well as an intimate intersects with Nora’s plight is the he has suppressed has its risks. Finally family novel in the tradition of the surprise and suspense of this brilliant seeing the real world he emerged from author’s bestselling We Were the novel. could upend it all over again. Mulvaneys. Mythical, lyrical, and sweeping in Kristian Novak is a Croatian writer, linguist, Joyce Carol Oates is a novelist, critic, scope, Inland is grounded in true but and university professor. His novel Dark playwright, poet and author of short stories little-known history. It showcases all

Mother Earth was awarded the Tportal and one of America’s most highly respected of Téa Obreht’s talents as a writer, as THE 2021 LONGLIST Prize for Croatian Novel of the Year and literary figures. She has written some of the she subverts and reimagines the myths was named one of the ten best Croatian most enduring fiction of our time, including of the American West, making them novels in the last fifty years by Večernji list. We Were the Mulvaneys, which was an entirely—and unforgettably—her own. The novel was successfully adapted for the Oprah Book Club Choice, and Blonde, stage, and a film adaptation is in the works. which was nominated for the National Téa Obreht is the author of The Tiger’s Novak is also the author of The Hanged Book Award. She is the Roger S. Berlind Wife, a finalist for the National Book Award. and Gypsy, Yet So Beautiful, which was the Distinguished Professor of Humanities at She was born in Belgrade, in the former recipient of the Gjalski Prize. Dark Mother Princeton University and a recipient of the Yugoslavia, in 1985 and has lived in the Earth is his English-language debut. National Book Award and the PEN/Malamud United States since the age of twelve. She Award for Excellence in Short Fiction. currently lives in New York City and teaches Ellen Elias-Bursac has been translating at Hunter College. fiction and non-fiction by Bosnian, Croatian, Available to borrow on Borrowbox and Serbian writers since the 1980s. The from DublinCity Libraries/Public Available to borrow on Borrowbox AATSEEL translation award was given to her Libraries Ireland. from DublinCity Libraries/Public translation of David Albahari’s short-story Libraries Ireland. collection Words Are Something Else, ALTA’s National Translation Award was given to her translation of Albahari’s novel Götz Inland and Meyer in 2006. Her book Translating Téa Obreht Shadowplay Evidence and Interpreting Testimony at a Joseph O’Connor War Crimes Tribunal: Working in a Tug-of- Nominated by: War was given the Mary Zirin Prize in 2015. San Diego Public Library, United States Nominated by: Bibliothèques municipales de Genève, In the lawless, Switzerland drought-ridden Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars. lands of the London, 1878. Joyce Carol Oates Arizona Territory Three extraordinary in 1893, two people begin their Nominated by: extraordinary life together - and Stadtbücherei Frankfurt am Main, Germany lives unfold. Nora the idea for Dracula is an unflinching is born. Fresh from The bonds of family frontierswoman life in Dublin, are tested in the awaiting the return Bram Stoker - now wake of a profound of the men in manager of the tragedy, providing her life—her husband, who has gone Lyceum Theatre - a look at the darker in search of water for the parched is wrestling with side of our society. household, and her elder sons, who dark demons in a new city, in a new Night. Sleep. Death. have vanished after an explosive marriage, and with his own literary The Stars. is a argument. Nora is biding her time with aspirations. gripping study her youngest son, who is convinced of contemporary that a mysterious beast is stalking the As he walks the streets at night, streets America through land around their home. haunted by the Ripper and the gossip the prism of a family tragedy: when which swirls around his friend Oscar a powerful parent dies, each of his Meanwhile, Lurie is a former outlaw Wilde, he finds new inspiration. Soon, adult children reacts in startling and and a man haunted by ghosts. He sees the eerie tale of Dracula begins to unexpected ways, and his grieving lost souls who want something from emerge. widow in the most surprising way of all. him, and he finds reprieve from their

13 dublinliteraryaward.ie But Henry Irving, volcanic leading man career she craves. ut for every and impresario, is determined that challenge ahead—romantic, nothing will get in the way of Bram’s professional, sexual, and familial— This Excellent Machine dedication to the Lyceum. Mona wonders how much of her Stephen Orr future has already been defined by the Nominated by: Joseph O’Connor was born in Dublin. His challenges of her past. State Library of South Australia, books include eight previous novels: Australia Cowboys and Indians (Whitbread Prize An emotional, funny, and universal shortlist), Desperadoes, The Salesman, novel about the people, experiences, Clem Whelan’s got Inishowen, Star of the Sea (American and choices that make us who we are, a problem: trapped Library Association Award, Irish Post Award Mona in Three Acts is a revelatory in the suburbs THE 2021 LONGLIST for Fiction, France’s Prix Millepages, Italy’s journey of a woman’s self-discovery, in the Sunnyboy Premio Acerbi, Prix Madeleine Zepter for forgiveness, and courage to finally summer of 1984 he European novel of the year), Redemption speak her truth. has to decide what Falls, Ghost Light (Dublin One City One to do with his life. Book Novel 2011) and The Thrill of it All. Griet Op de Beeck (b. 1973) worked as a Matriculation? He’s His fiction has been translated into forty drama teacher in the theater for ten years. more than able, languages. He received the 2012 Irish PEN She went on to write for Humoand for De but not remotely Award for outstanding achievement in Morgen. This, her second novel since the interested. Become literature and in 2014 he was appointed appearance of Many Heavens Above the a writer? His failed lawyer neighbour Frank McCourt Professor of Creative Writing Seventh, has been eagerly awaited. Peter encourages him, but maybe it’s at the University of Limerick. just another dead end? Michele Hutchison (b. 1972) is a literary Available to borrow on Borrowbox translator from Dutch and French into To make sense of the world, Clem uses from DublinCity Libraries/Public English. As a former commissioning editor his telescope to spy on his neighbours. Libraries Ireland. at various top publishing houses, she has From his wall, John Lennon gives him translated more than twenty books from advice; his sister (busy with her Feres Dutch and one from French. Recent literary Trabilsie hairdressing apprenticeship) translations include ’La Superba’ by Ilja tells him he’s a pervert; his best friend, Mona in Three Acts Leonard Pfeijffer, ’Roxy’ by Esther Gerritsen, Curtis, gets hooked on sex and Dante Griet Op de Beeck and Fortunate Slaves by Tom Lanoye. In and, as the year progresses and the 2020, Michele won the Vondel Translation Translated from the Dutch by Michele essays go unwritten, he starts to Prize for her translation of ‘Stage Four’ Hutchison understand the excellence of it all. by Sander Kollaard and the International Booker Prize together with author Marieke Nominated by: His Pop, facing the first dawn of Lucas Rijneveld for ‘The Discomfort of Bibliotheek Eindhoven, Netherlands dementia, determined to follow an Evening’. She is also co-author of ‘The old map into the desert in search of Happiest Kids in the World: What We Can Mona’s demanding Lasseter’s Reef. His old neighbour, Vicky, Learn from Dutch Parents’. mother ruled their returning to Lanark Avenue - and a home until a car smile is all it takes. Followed by a series crash took her life of failed driving tests; and the man at and changed their his door, claiming to be his father. ... family forever. Left to tend to a distant Stephen Orr was born in Adelaide in father and a needy 1967 and grew up in Hillcrest. He studied younger brother, teaching and spent his early career in a Mona finds her range of country and metropolitan schools. new role almost One of his early plays, Attempts to Draw too much to bear. And when a new Jesus, became his first Australian/Vogel stepmother, troubled and depressed, shortlisted novel, published in 2002. Since adds yet another crack to the family then he has published seven novels, a portrait, Mona’s forced to shoulder an volume of short tories (Datsunland) and two even greater share of the emotional books of non-fiction (The Cruel City and The burden. Fierce Country).

Somewhere between her responsibility He has won or been nominated for awards to her family and to her own life, Mona such as the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, finds a route of escape: in a theater the Miles Franklin Award and the

dublinliteraryaward.ie 14 International Dublin Literary Award. This Dexter Palmer is the author of two previous been published by the TLS, History Today, Excellent Machine is the first volume in an novels: Version Control, which was selected Modern Poetry in Translation and the New anticipated trilogy of childhood novels. as one of the best novels of 2016 by GQ, Statesman, and she has had long-running the San Francisco Chronicle, and other columns on literature in translation in The Stephen Orr is married and lives in Adelaide. publications, and The Dream of Perpetual­ Quietus and the Brixton Review of Books. Motion, which was selected as one of the Available to borrow on Borrowbox best fiction debuts of 2010 by Kirkus She has translated over a dozen works of from DublinCity Libraries/Public Re­views. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey. German-language literature, specialising Libraries Ireland. in contemporary literary fiction and literary non-fiction. She was the inaugural Translator in Residence at the British Library, and her

Mary Toft; or, The Rabbit Queen The Pine Islands translations have featured in The New Yor- THE 2021 LONGLIST Dexter Palmer Marion Poschmann ker, Granta, The White Review, Literary Hub and elsewhere. She was shortlisted for the Nominated by: Free Library of Translated from the Dutch by Jen Calleja Man Booker International Prize 2019 for her Philadelphia, United States translation of Marion Poschmann’s The Pine Nominated by: Islands (Serpent’s Tail), and for the Schlegel- In 1726, in the Leipziger Städtische Bibliotheken, Tieck Prize 2018 for Kerstin Hensel’s Dance town of Godalming, Germany by the Canal (Peirene Press). England, a woman Available to borrow on Borrowbox confounded the na- When Gilbert wakes from DublinCity Libraries/Public tion’s medical com- one day from a Libraries Ireland. munity by giving dream that his birth to seventeen wife has cheated rabbits. This aston- on him, he flees - ishing true story is immediately and A Chronicle of Forgetting the basis for Dexter inexplicably - for Sebastijan Pregelj Palmer’s stunning, Tokyo, where he powerfully evocative new novel. meets a fellow lost Translated from the Slovene by Rawley soul: Yosa, a young Grau Surgeon’s apprentice Zachary Walsh Japanese student knows that his master, John Howard, clutching a copy of The Complete Nominated by: prides himself on his rationality. But Manual of Suicide. Together, Gilbert and Ljubljana City Library, Slovenia John cannot explain how or why Mary Yosa set off on a pilgrimage to see the Toft, the wife of a local journeyman, has pine islands of Matsushima, one looking Every morning managed to give birth to a dead rabbit. for the perfect end to his life, the other the memories are When this singular event be­comes a for a fresh start. a little different. regular occurrence, John and Zach­ary re- The world of alize that nothing in their experience as Playful and profound, The Pine Islands Sebastijan Pregelj’s rural physicians has prepared them to is a beautiful tale of friendship, trans- novel A Chronicle deal with a situation like this—strange, formation and acceptance in modern of Forgetting troubling, and possibly miraculous. Japan. is governed by John contacts sev­eral of London’s finest dementia. In his surgeons, three of whom soon arrive Marion Poschmann was born in Essen in previous novels in Godalming to observe, argue, and 1969. A prize-winning poet and novelist, she and stories Pregelj perhaps use the case to cultivate their has won both of Germany’s premier poetry has taken us to own fame. prizes and the Berlin Prize for Literature. incredible, fantastic worlds, to worlds of Poschmann has been shortlisted for the Ger- the past, and once even into space, but When King George I learns of Mary’s man Book Prize on three occasions and won the most incredible world is the world plight, she and her doctors are the 2013 Wilhelm Raabe Literature Prize. hidden in the human brain. summoned to London, where Zachary experiences a world far removed Jen Calleja is a writer and literary transla- Here, he gives us a remarkable, deeply from his small-town ex­istence and is tor based in London.Her fiction, creative humanistic story about pondering exposed to some of the dark­est corners non-fiction and poetry have appeared in life and looking for meaning, for that of the human soul. All the while Mary The London Magazine, Ambit, Another Gaze, happiness which we do not know how to lies in bed, as doubts begin to blossom 3:AM, Somesuch Stories, Hotel, and in the find in the privileged part of the world among her caretakers and a group of anthologies On Relationships (3 of Cups, and which people from other continents onlookers waits with impatience for 2020) and Spells: 21st Century Occult Poetry would like to have, but most of all this is an­other birth, another miracle. (Ignota, 2018). Her reviews and articles have a novel about accepting the end of life.

15 dublinliteraryaward.ie It speaks of last things with a light shake by Aleš Debeljak. He has also trans- novel is at once a keen satire of that inspires and awakens. Pregelj is lated two plays – Ivan Cankar’s Pohujšanje v surviving racism in America and a a writer with a keen ear for a story, dolini šentflorjanski (Scandal in St. Flo- profoundly moving family story. At for structuring plot, for gradual rian’s Valley) and Slavko Grum’s Dogodek v its center is a father who just wants intensification, and for unexpected, mestu Gogi (An Event in the Town of Goga, his son to thrive in a broken world. sometimes extremely minute, but never co-translated with Nikolai Jeffs) – as well Maurice Carlos Ruffin’s work evokes unimportant reversals. He confirms as poetry by Tomaž Šalamun, Miljana Cunta, the clear vision of Ralph Ellison, the anew that he is in command of his craft Miklavž Komelj, Janez Ramoveš, Andrej dizzying menace of Franz Kafka, and the and one of Slovenia’s finest writers. Rozman Roza, and others. crackling prose of Vladimir Nabokov. We Cast a Shadow fearlessly shines a light Sebastijan Pregelj was born in Ljubljana in From Russian, he has translated a on the violence we inherit, and on the

THE 2021 LONGLIST 1970 and studied history at the Faculty of collection of poems and letters by Yevgeny desperate things we do for the ones we Arts of the University of Ljubljana. In the Baratynsky, A Science Not for the Earth, love. 1990s, he began writing short stories, which for which he was awarded the 2016 appeared in various literary magazines. In prize for Best Scholarly Translation from Maurice Carlos Ruffin is the author of We addition to four short story collections, he the American Association of Teachers Cast a Shadow, which was a finalist for the has published six novels: Leta milosti (Years Slavic and Eastern European Languages PEN/Faulkner Award and the PEN/ Open of Mercy, 2004), Na terasi babilonskega (AATSEEL). In 2017, his translation of Dušan Book Award and longlisted for the Center stolpa (On the Terrace of the Tower of Šarotar’s Panorama was shortlisted for the for Ficiton First Novel Prize. A recipient of an Babel, 2008), Mož, ki je jahal tigra (The Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize. Iowa Review Award in fiction, his work has Man Who Rode a Tiger, 2010), Pod srečno appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review, AGNI, zvezdo (Under a Lucky Star, 2013), Kronika Kenyon Review, Massachusetts Review, and pozabljanja (A Chronicle of Forgetting, Unfathomable City: A New Orleans Atlas. 2014), Vdih. Izdih. (Breathe In. Breathe Out, We Cast a Shadow A native of New Orleans, he is a graduate 2017), and, most recently, V Elvisovi sobi Maurice Ruffin of the University of New Orleans Creative (Dear Ali. Dear Elvis, 2019). Writing Workshop and a member of the Nominated by: Peauxdunque Writers Alliance. He also writes books for children. Four of Chicago Public Library, United States his novels have been nominated for the Kresnik Award for Best Slovene Novel, and “You can be his stories have appeared in anthologies in beautiful, even Beside Myself German, Czech, Polish, and English. Three of more beautiful than Sasha Marianna Salzmann his novels have been published by the Drava before.” This is the Verlag (Klagenfurt, Austria) in Erwin Köstler’s seductive promise Translated from the Dutch by Jen Calleja German translation: Auf der Terrasse des of Dr. Nzinga’s Turms von Babel (2013), Unter einem clinic, where Nominated by: glücklichen Stern (2015), and Chronik des anyone can get Zentralbibliothek Zürich, Switzerland Vergessens (2017). their lips thinned, their skin bleached, Beside Myself is He is co-author, with Gašper Troha, of the and their nose the disturbing and guide Ljubljana Literary Trail, which exists in narrowed. A complete demelanization exhilarating story both English and Slovene. Pregelj lives and will liberate you from the confines of of a family across works in Ljubljana and is a member of the being born in a black body—if you can four generations. Slovene Writers’ Association. afford it. At its heart is one woman’s search for Rawley Grau is originally from Baltimore, In this near-future Southern city her twin brother. USA and has lived in Ljubljana since plagued by fenced-in ghettos and police When Anton goes 2001. His translations from Slovene include violence, more and more residents are missing and the the novels Biljard v Dobrayu (Billiards at the turning to this experimental medical only clue is a Hotel Dobray) and Panorama, both by Dušan procedure. postcard sent from Istanbul, Alissa Šarotar; the novel Kronosova žetev (The leaves her life in Berlin to find him. Harvest of Chronos) and the short-prose col- Like any father, our narrator just wants lection Fragma, both by Mojca Kumerdej; the the best for his son, Nigel, a biracial boy Without her twin, the sharer of her novels Sušna doba (Dry Season) by Gabriela whose black birthmark is getting bigger memories and the mirror of her own Babnik and Sukub (The Succubus) by Vlado by the day. The darker Nigel becomes, self, Ali is lost.In a city steeped in Žabot (the latter co-translated with Nikolai the more frightened his father feels. But political and social changes, where Jeffs); the short fiction collection Družinske how far will he go to protect his son? you can buy gender-changing drugs on parabole (Family Parables), by Boris Pintar; And will he destroy his family in the the street, Ali’s search—for her missing and the essay collection The Hidden Hand of process?This electrifying, hallucinatory brother , for her identity—will take her

dublinliteraryaward.ie 16 on a journey for connection and Elif Shafak is an award-winning British- hear but nobody else is singing. When belonging.Beside Myself is a brilliant Turkish novelist and the most widely read one of Neela’s songs is covered by literary debut about belonging, female author in Turkey. She writes in both internet artist RUK-MINI and becomes a about family and love, and about the Turkish and English, and has published viral sensation, the two musicians meet enigmatic nature of identity. seventeen books, eleven of which are and a transformative friendship begins. novels. Her work has been translated into But before long, the systemic pressures Sasha Marianna Salzmann was born in fifty languages. Shafak holds a PhD in that pit women against one another Volgograd in 1985 and grew up in Moscow. political science and she has taught at begin to bear down on Neela and RUK- In 1995 she emigrated with her family to various universities in Turkey, the US and MINI, stirring up self-doubt and jealousy. Germany and studied literature, theatre and the UK, including St Anne’s College, Oxford With a single tweet, their friendship media at the University of Hildesheim. She University, where she is an honorary fellow. implodes, a career is destroyed, and has been awarded multiple accolades for her the two women find themselves at the THE 2021 LONGLIST plays, and Beside Myself was shortlisted for She is a member of World Economic Forum centre of an internet firestorm. the German Book Prize in 2017. Salzmann Global Agenda Council on Creative Economy now teaches creative writing in Germany, and a founding member of the European Vivek Shraya is an artist whose body of work Turkey, Moldova, Spain, Italy and the USA. Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR). An crosses the boundaries of music, literature, advocate for women’s rights, LGBT rights and visual art, theater, and film. Her bestselling Imogen Taylor is a translator who has freedom of speech, Shafak is an inspiring book I’m Afraid of Men was heralded by lived in Berlin since 2001. Her translations public speaker and twice a TED global Vanity Fair as “cultural rocket fuel,” and her include Promise Me You’ll Shoot Yourself by speaker, each time receiving a standing album with Queer Songbook Orchestra, Florian Huber, Fear by Dirk Kurbjuweit and ovation. Part-Time Woman, was nominated for the The Truth and Other Lies by Sasha Arango. Polaris Music Prize. She is one half of the Shafak contributes to many major music duo Too Attached and the founder of Available to borrow on Borrowbox publications around the world and she has the publishing imprint VS. Books. A five-time from DublinCity Libraries/Public been awarded the title of Chevalier des Lambda Literary Award finalist, Vivek has Libraries Ireland. Arts et des Lettres. In 2017 she was chosen also received honors from the Writers’ Trust by Politico as one of the twelve people of Canada and the Publishing Triangle. She who would make the world better. She is a director on the board of the Tegan and has judged numerous literary prizes and is Sara Foundation and an assistant professor 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This chairing the Wellcome Prize 2019. Find out of creative writing at the University of Strange World more about Elif Shafak on her website: www. Calgary. Elif Shafak elifshafak.com

Nominated by: Available to borrow on Borrowbox Available to borrow on Borrowbox from DublinCity Libraries/Public Dunedin Public Libraries, New Zealand from DublinCity Libraries/Public Libraries Ireland. City of Cape Town Library & Information Libraries Ireland. Services, South Africa

‘In the first minute Crossing following her death, The Subtweet: A Novel Patjim Statovci Tequila Leila’s Vivek Shraya consciousness Translated from the Finnish by David began to ebb, slowly Nominated by: Hackston and steadily, like a Vancouver Public Library, Canada tide receding from Nominated by: the shore...’For Leila, Celebrated Helsinki City Library, Finland each minute after multidisciplinary her death recalls a artist Vivek Shraya’s Bujar’s world is sensuous memory: second novel is a collapsing. His spiced goat stew, sacrificed by her father no-holds-barred father is dying to celebrate the birth of a yearned-for examination of and his homeland, son; bubbling vats of lemon and sugar the music industry, Albania, bristles to wax women’s legs while men are at social media, and with hunger and prayer; the cardamom coffee she shares making art in unrest. When his with a handsome student in the brothel the modern era, fearless friend where she works. Each fading memory shining a light on Agim is discovered brings back the friends she made in her the promise and peril of being seen. wearing his bittersweet life - friends who are now ndie musician Neela Devaki has built a mother’s red dress desperately trying to find her . . . career writing the songs she wants to and beaten with

17 dublinliteraryaward.ie his father’s belt, he persuades Bujar that there is no place for them in their On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous The Trumpet Shall Sound country. Desperate for a chance to shape Ocean Vuong Eibhear Walshe their own lives, they flee. Nominated by: Nominated by: This is the beginning of a journey across Deichman Oslo Public Library, Norway Cork City Libraries, Ireland cities, borders and identities, from the bazaars of Tirana to the monuments of University Library of Bern, Switzerland It is 1742 and Rome and the drag bars of New York. It Richmond Public Library, United States the celebrated is also a search through shifting gender DC Public Library, United States composer Georg and social personae, for acceptance and Handel is in THE 2021 LONGLIST love.But faced with marginalization at This is a letter from Dublin for the home and only precarious means of a son to a mother first performance escape and survival, what chance do who cannot read. of his new work the young pair have of forging a new Written when the Messiah. Once the life? Pursued by memories of home and speaker, Little most successful echoes of folk tales, they risk losing Dog, is in his late composer of themselves in the struggle to leave twenties, the letter opera in London, their pasts behind. unearths a family’s and fêted by aristocracy and royalty history that began alike, Handel is now nearly penniless, Pajtim Statovci (b. 1990) is a Finnish- before he was born. Kosovan novelist. He moved from Kosovo recovering from a debilitating illness It tells of Vietnam, and out of favour and his exile in to Finland with his family when he was two of the lasting impact of war, and of his years old. He is currently a Ph.D candidate Dublin a sign of his fall from grace. at the University of Helsinki. His first novel, family’s struggle to forge a new future. My Cat Yugoslavia, also published by With him and due to sing in his Messiah Pushkin Press, won the prestigious Helsingin And it serves as a doorway into parts is the celebrated young actress, Sanomat Literature Prize. Crossing won the of Little Dog’s life his mother has never Susannah Cibber, the subject of scandal Toisinkoinen Literature Prize in 2016 and, known - episodes of bewilderment, and public disgrace, on the run from an Statovci also won the 2018 Helsinki Writer fear and passion - all the while moving of the Year Award. abusive husband and considered with closer to an unforgettable revelation. suspicion by the musical elite of Dublin. David Hackston is a British translator of Ocean Vuong is the author of the critically Finnish and Swedish literature and drama. In this exciting new historical novel, acclaimed poetry collection Night Sky He graduated from University College Lon- Eibhear Walshe recount’s Handel’s time don with a degree in Scandinavian Studies with Exit Wounds, winner of the Whiting in Dublin, retracing his golden youth and now lives in Helsinki where he works Award and the T.S. Eliot Prize. His writings in Rome, his sometimes shady role as a freelance translator. Notable recent have also been featured in The Atlantic, as emissary and spy for the Elector of publications include the Anna Fekete trilogy Harper’s, The Nation, New Republic, The Hanover, who in 1714 would become by Kati Hiekkapelto, Katja Kettu’s wartime New Yorker, and The New York Times. epic The Midwife, four novels by ‘Helsinki George I of Great Britain and Ireland, In 2019 he was awarded a MacArthur and his doomed first love affair. With noir’ author Antti Tuomainen, and Pajtim Foundation Fellowship. Born in Saigon, Statovci’s enigmatic My Cat Yugoslavia and energy and insight, this novel leads Vietnam, he currently lives in Northampton, Crossing. His drama translations include up to the first performance of the Massachusetts, where he serves as an three plays by Heini Junkkaala, most recently most celebrated work of sacred music, Play it, Billy! (2012) about the life and times Assistant Professor of English at UMass- with failure and loss transformed in of jazz pianist Billy Tipton. Amherst. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a moment by the genius of Handel’s his first novel. musical imagination. Available to borrow on Borrowbox Available to borrow on Borrowbox from DublinCity Libraries/Public Eibhear Walshe was born in Waterford, studied in Dublin, and now lives in Cork, where he lectures in the School of English at University College Cork and is Director of Creative Writing. He has published in the area of memoir, literary criticism and biography, and his books include Kate O’Brien: A Writing Life, (2006), Oscar’s Shadow: Wilde and Ireland, (2012), and A Different Story: the Writings if Colm Tóibín, (2013). His childhood memoir, Cissie’s Abbatoir, (2009) was broadcast on RTÉ’s

dublinliteraryaward.ie 18 ‘Book on One’. His novel, The Diary of Mary Dr King’s ringing assertion, ‘Throw us While Felicia and Edgar don’t quite Travers, (2014), was shortlisted for the Kerry in jail, and we will still love you.’ But understand each other, and Felicia Group Novel of the Year Award in 2015 and Elwood’s fellow inmate and new friend recognizes that Edgar is selfish, longlisted for the 2016 International Dublin Turner thinks Elwood is naive and arrogant, and often unkind, they form a Literary Award. He was associate editor, with worse; the world is crooked, and the bond built on grief (and proximity) that Catherine Marshall, of Modern Ireland in 100 only way to survive is to emulate the results in the birth of a son Felicia calls Artworks, (2016), edited by Fintan O’Toole cruelty and cynicism of their oppressors. Armistice. Or Army, for short. Some and shortlisted for the Bord Gais Energy The tension between Elwood’s idealism years later, Felicia and Army (now 14) Irish Book Awards. and Turner’s skepticism leads to a are living in the basement of a home decision which will have decades-long owned by Oliver, a divorced man of repercussions. Portuguese descent who has two kids--

the teenaged Heather and the odd little THE 2021 LONGLIST The Nickel Boys Based on the history of a real reform Hendrix. Colson Whitehead school in Florida that operated for one hundred and eleven years and Along with Felicia and Army, they form Nominated by: warped and destroyed the lives of an unconventional family, except that Bibliotheek Gent, Belgium thousands of children, The Nickel Boys Army wants to sleep with Heather, and New Hampshire State Library, United is a devastating, driven narrative by a Oliver wants to kill Army. Then Army’s States great American novelist whose work is fascination with his absent father--and essential to understanding the current his absent father’s money--begins to Cleveland Public Library, United States reality of the United States. grow as odd gifts from Edgar begin to show up. And Felicia feels Edgar’s Author of The Colson Whitehead is the Sunday Times unwelcome shadow looming over them. Underground bestselling author of The Underground Railroad, Colson Railroad, The Noble Hustle, Zone One, Sag A brutal assault, a mortal disease, a Whitehead Harbor, The Intuitionist, John Henry Days, death, and a birth reshuffle this group brilliantly Apex Hides the Hurt, and one collection of of people again to form another version dramatizes another essays, The Colossus of New York. A Pulitzer of the family. Reproduction is a strand of American Prize winner and a recipient of MacArthur profoundly insightful exploration of the history through and Guggenheim fellowships, he lives in bizarre ways people become bonded the story of two New York City. that insists that family isn’t a matter of boys sentenced to blood. a hellish reform school in 1960s Florida. Available to borrow on Borrowbox from DublinCity Libraries/Public Ian Williams is the author of Reproduction, Libraries Ireland. winner of the Scotiabank Giller Prize; Elwood Curtis has taken the words of Personals, shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Dr Martin Luther King to heart: he is Prize and the Robert Kroetsch Poetry Book as good as anyone. Abandoned by his Award; Not Anyone’s Anything, winner of the parents, brought up by his loving, strict Danuta Gleed Literary Award for the best Reproduction first collection of short fiction in Canada; and clear-sighted grandmother, Elwood Ian Williams is about to enroll in the local black and You Know Who You Are, a finalist for college. But given the time and the the ReLit Prize for poetry. He was named Nominated by: as one of ten Canadian writers to watch by place, one innocent mistake is enough Saint john Free Public Library, Canada CBC. Williams completed his Ph.D. in English to destroy his future, and so Elwood at the University of Toronto, mentored by arrives at The Nickel Academy, which Felicia and Edgar George Elliot Clarke, and is currently an claims to provide ‘physical, intellectual meet as their assistant professor of poetry in the Creative and moral training’ which will equip Writing program at the University of British mothers are dying. its inmates to become ‘honorable and Columbia. Felicia, a teen from honest men’. an island nation, and Edgar, the lazy In reality, the Nickel Academy is a heir of a wealthy chamber of horrors, where physical, German family, emotional and sexual abuse is rife, come together where corrupt officials and tradesmen only because their do a brisk trade in supplies intended mothers share a for the school, and where any boy who hospital room. When Felicia’s mother resists is likely to disappear ‘out back’. dies and Edgar’s “Mutter” does not, Stunned to find himself in this vicious Felicia drops out of high school and environment, Elwood tries to hold on to takes a job as Mutter’s caregiver.

19 dublinliteraryaward.ie prestigious Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative. Her second book, the story The Bird King The Yield collection After the Carnage was published G.Willow Wilson Tara June Winch in 2016. After the Carnage was longlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award Nominated by: Nominated by: for fiction, shortlisted for the 2017 NSW Slemani Public Library, Slemani, Iraq State Library NSW, Australia Premier’s Christina Stead prize for Fiction National Library of Australia, Australia and the Queensland Literary Award for a The Bird King is a collection. fantastical journey The yield in English set at the height is the reaping, the She wrote the Indigenous dance

THE 2021 LONGLIST of the Spanish things that man documentary, Carriberrie, which screened at Inquisition from can take from the 71st Cannes Film Festival and toured the award-winning the land. In the internationally. The Yield won the 2020 author of Alif language of the Miles Franklin Literary Award as well as the the Unseen and Wiradjuri yield is Christina Stead Prize for Fiction, the People’s writer of the Ms. the things you give Choice Award and Book of the Year at the Marvel series, G. to, the movement, 2020 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. Willow Wilson’s The the space between Bird King is a jubilant story of love things: baayanha. Available to borrow on Borrowbox versus power, religion versus faith, and Knowing that he will soon die, Albert from DublinCity Libraries/Public freedom versus safety. ‘Poppy’ Gondiwindi takes pen to paper. Libraries Ireland.

G. Willow Wilson is the author of the His life has been spent on the banks acclaimed novel The Bird King (2019), of the Murrumby River at Prosperous co-creator of the Hugo and American Book House, on Massacre Plains. Albert is Award-winning series Ms. Marvel (2013- determined to pass on the language of 2018), and has written for some of the his people and everything that was ever world’s best-known superhero comic book remembered. He finds the words on the series, including The X-Men, Superman, wind. and Wonder Woman. Her first novel, Alif the Unseen, won the 2013 World Fantasy Award August Gondiwindi has been living on for Best Novel, was a finalist for the Center the other side of the world for ten years For Fiction’s First Novel Prize, and was long- when she learns of her grandfather’s listed for the 2013 Women’s Prize for Fiction. death. She returns home for his burial, In 2015, she won the Graphic Literature wracked with grief and burdened Innovator Prize at the PEN America Literary with all she tried to leave behind. Her Awards. Her work has been translated into homecoming is bittersweet as she over a dozen languages. She lives in Seattle. confronts the love of her kin and news that Prosperous is to be repossessed by Available to borrow on Borrowbox a mining company. from DublinCity Libraries/Public Libraries Ireland. Determined to make amends she endeavours to save their land – a quest that leads her to the voice of her grandfather and into the past, the stories of her people, the secrets of the river.

Tara June Winch is a Wiradjuri author, born in Australia in 1983 and based in France. Her first novel, Swallow the Air was critically acclaimed. She was named a Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Australian Novelist, and has won numerous literary awards for Swallow the Air. A 10th Anniversary edition was published in 2016. In 2008, Tara was mentored by Nobel Prize winner Wole Soyinka as part of the

dublinliteraryaward.ie 20 18 Translated Novels • 10 Languages

Things That Fall The Eighth Life: Dark Mother Earth From The Sky ( for Brilka ) Kristian Novak Selja Ahava Nino Haratischwili Translated from the Translated from the Translated from the Croatian by Finnish by German by Ellen Elias-Bursac Emily Jeremiah and Charlotte Collins and Fleur Jeremiah Ruth Martin THE 2021 LONGLIST

Until Stones Become Beyond Yamashita Mona in Three Acts Lighter Than Water and Percival Griet Op de Beeck António Lobo Shaari Isa Antunes Translated from the Translated from Dutch by Translated from the the Malay by Michele Hutchison Portugese by Shaari Isa Jeff Love

Homeland Tyll The Pine Islands Fernando Aramburu Daniel Kehlmann Marion Poschmann

Translated from the Translated from Translated from the Spanish by the German by Dutch by Alfred McAdam Ross Benjamin Jen Calleja

It Would Be Night In The Ditch A Chronicle of Caracus Herman Koch Forgetting Karina Sainz Borgo Sebastijan Pregelj Translated from the Translated from the Dutch by Translated from the Spanish by Sam Garrett Slovene by Elizabeth Bryer Rawley Grau

The Pelican: The Boy Beside Myself a comedy Marcus Malte Sasha Marianna Michael Martin Salzmann Driessen Translated from the French by Translated from the Translated from the Emma Ramadan and German by Dutch by Tom Roberge Imogen Taylor Jonathan Reeder

The Other Name: Hurricane Season Crossing Septology 1-11 Fernanda Melchor Patjim Statovci Jon Fosse Translated from the Translated from the Translated from the Spanish by Finnish by Norwegian by Sophie Hughes David Hackston Damion Searles

21 dublinliteraryaward.ie