THE NEWSLETTER OF THE INTERNATIONAL IMPAC DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD

FICTION MATTERS No. 20 February 2014

Shortlist Announcement th COMPLETE LIST OF 9 April 2014 ELIGIBLE TITLES Winner Announcement 12th June 2014 2014

www.impacdublinaward.ie City of Bohane by Kevin Barry is the Winner of the 2013 Award Photo: Jason Photography Clarke

Kevin Barry is the winner of the 2013 award. He is pictured here with The Lord Mayor and Patron of the Award, Naoise Ó Muirí and with Margaret Hayes, Dublin City Librarian. Photo: Jason Photography Clarke Photo: Jason Photography Clarke

Alex Bowler (left) Jonathan Cape, publishers of City of Bohane is presented (L-R) Jane Alger, Director Dublin UNESCO City of Literature and with a Dublin Crystal Bowl by City Manager, Philip Maguire. Ms. Palína Magnúsdóttir, Reykjavík City Librarian, who attended the presentation dinner representing nominating libraries worldwide. City of Bohane by Kevin Barry is the Winner of the 2013 Award Photo: Jason Photography Clarke Photo: Jason Photography Clarke

Kamila Shamsie, judge 2013 award, is presented with a scroll by the Lord Eoin Moore (left) who participated in the Fighting Words creative writing Mayor, Naoise Ó’Muirí. The judging panel also included; Salim Bachi, Krista programme and who’s short story was featured on a special issue stamp to Kaer, Pat McCabe, Clive Sinclair and Judge Eugene Sullivan (non-voting celebrate Dublin’s permanent designation in 2010 as a UNESCO City of chair). Literature. Eoin is pictured here with Aoife Ó Ceallachain and Zethapong Nimanterdwong, winner of the Thai Young Writers competition.

Congratulations to Cork, Dublin and Limerick City Libraries, nominators of City of Bohane!

Cork City Librarian, Liam Ronayne and Sinéad Feely, Executive Librarian, The Granary, Limerick City Library nominators of City of Bohane.

“When we heard that Kevin Barry’s City of Bohane was the actual winner of “City of Bohane was a book that stayed long in the mind after reading. Kevin Barry the Dublin City Impac Award we were thrilled and heartened beyond belief. At showed himself to be a master of invention with a rich and varied vocabulary Cork City Libraries we’d already known and loved Kevin’s short fiction, for its and the creation of a new yet strangely familiar world. We were delighted that it quirkiness and brilliance, but we were certain, and our readers constantly reminded appealed to so many of our borrowers and other readers alike.” us, that the novel was a new event in world fiction.”

The International IMPAC DUBLIN Award is presented annually for a novel written in English or translated into English. Founded in partnership with IMPAC, the Award is an initiative of Dublin City Council, the municipal government of Dublin. The Award aims to promote excellence in world literature. Nominations are made by library systems in major cities throughout the world. The 2014 Longlist is announced, Dublin City Library & Archive,

Photo: Photography Fennell NovemberPhoto: Jason Photography Clarke 2013

The Lord Mayor and Patron of the Award, Oisín Quinn and Margaret Hayes, (L-R) Lord Mayor, Oisín Quinn; Owen Keegan, Dublin City Manager;

Photo: Jason Photography Clarke Dublin City Librarian. Giles Foden, member of the 2014 Judging Panel.

Members of the 2014 Judging Panel with Margaret Hayes, City Librarian (L-R) Maya Jaggi, Judge Eugene Sullivan (non-voting chair), Catherine Dunne, Maciej Swierkockí, Margaret Hayes, Giles Foden and Tash Aw. Photo: Jason Photography Clarke Photo: Jason Photography Clarke

Donal Ryan, longlisted author (The Spinning Heart) surveys the longlist. Maya Jaggi, member of the 2014 Judging Panel. Eligible Titles 2014

The Book of Emotions In a desperate bid to generate income, Charlotte ambition – but when their intense friendship suffers rents a room to Madan, an Indian tailor with an a blow, each sets off on her own, only to learn that João Almino astonishing talent for making beautiful garments. the “glamorous” world of adult physicality can be Translated from the original Portuguese Madan is unable to communicate verbally, but the at best banal and at worst dehumanizing. As their by Elizabeth Jackson two have an immediate and electrifying connection. choices take them to a painful crossroads, the girls Nominated by: As the extreme heat before the impending monsoon must reconnect if they have any hope of escaping Biblioteca Demonstrativa de Brasília with Fundacao paralyzes the residents of Rampur, the details of their their small-town destinies. Biblioteca Nacional, Brazil lives unfold: Charlotte’s unhappy childhood and the Silvia Avallone is a published poet who was born in early death of her husband, Madan’s poverty-stricken Isolating these moments in his memory and Biella, Italy, and now lives in Bologna. Swimming to life on the streets, and how and when their paths attempting to analyze them much like a lens, he Elba, her first novel, won second place in the 2010 have crossed before. envisions “a haiku stripped of rhetoric that captures Strega Prize competition and was a #1 bestseller in only what is in front of the camera.” Yet, deprived Threes Anna is a writer and director of film and Italy. Rights have been sold in twenty languages. of his sight, the photographer now must reconstruct theatre. She is the author of five critically acclaimed his experiences as a series of affective snapshots, a novels. Her debut film, The Bird Can’t Fly, premiered Seven Terrors diary of his emotions as they were frozen on this or at the San Sebastian International Film Festival. She Selvedin Avdić that day. The result, then, is not the description of a is currently working on the film adaptation of her Translated from the original Bosnian by Coral Petkovich remembered image, but of the emotional memory novel The Silent City. She lives in the Netherlands. Nominated by: the image evokes. João Almino gives us a trenchant Gradska Knjiznica Rijeka, Croatia portrait of an artist trying to close the gap between No One Is Here Except All of Us objective vision and sentimental memory, leafing Ramona Ausubel After nine months of self-imposed isolation through a catalog of his accomplishments and following his wife’s departure, the hero of Seven Nominated by: failures in a violent, artificial, universal city, and Terrors finally decides to face his loneliness and Houston Public Library, USA trying to reassemble the puzzle that was his life. join the world once more. However, when the 1939. Families in a remote Jewish village in Romania daughter of his old friend Aleksa appears in his João Almino is the acclaimed author of The feel the war close in on them. Their tribe has moved flat one morning with the news that her father has Five Seasons of Love. He has taught at Berkeley, and escaped for thousands of years but now, it seems, disappeared, he realises that his life is again about Stanford, The University of Chicago, The National there is nowhere else to go. At the suggestion of to change. As the two search for clues in Aleksa’s Autonomous University of Mexico, and The an eleven-year-old girl and a mysterious stranger, war diary, unearthed in a library in Sweden, they University of Brasilia. the villagers decide to reinvent the world: deny any come upon tales of unspeakable horror and mystery: Waiting for the Monsoon relationship with the known and start over from meetings with ghosts, a town under siege, demonic scratch. Destiny is unwritten. Time and history are brothers who ride on the wings of war, and many forgotten. Jobs, husbands, a child, are reassigned. more things so dangerous – and so precious – that And for years, there is boundless hope. they can only be discussed by the dead.

But the real world continues to unfold alongside Here, amidst such chaos, our hero endeavours to the imagined one and soon our narrator – the girl, cling to his sanity, doing his best to solve the riddle grown into a young mother – must flee her village to of Aleksa’s disappearance while attempting to save find her husband, save her children, and propel them his own soul and bring love back into his life. toward a real and hopeful future. Selvedin Avdić’s first book was a collection of short Ramona Ausubel has been published in The New stories called Tennants and Other Fantoms. His short Yorker, One Story, The Paris Review Daily, The Best stories have also appeared in various anthologies and American Fantasy and was a finalist for the Pushcart collections. He works as the editor-in-chief of the Prize. She is a recipient of the Glenn Schaeffer online magazine Zurnal and also edits his own radio Award in Fiction and a graduate of the MFA show, Free Flight, on BH Radio. program at the University of California, Irvine. The Voyage Swimming to Elba Murray Bail Silvia Avallone Nominated by: Translated from the original Italian by Antony Shugaar The State Library of Queensland, Brisbane, Threes Anna Nominated by: Australia Translated from the original Dutch Stavanger Bibliotek, Norway Dublin City Public Libraries, Ireland by Barbara Potter Fasting Nominated by: They were always a pair; daring, intelligent Anna Frank Delage, piano manufacturer from Sydney, Bibliotheek Utrecht, The Netherlands and breathtakingly gorgeous Francesca. Just shy of travels to Vienna, a city immersed in music, to fourteen, their newly acquired curves and skimpy present the Delage concert grand. He hopes to India, 1995. Charlotte Bridgwater lives with her bathing suits have earned them celebrity status on impress with its technical precision, its improvement father, a former British general, and just one loyal the beaches of their gritty town, where the glittering on the old pianos of Europe. servant in a stately old mansion in the town of resort island of Elba taunts them from across the How could he not know his piano is all wrong for Rampur. Money is scarce and the once grand estate bay. The girls, aware of their newfound power, are Vienna? Perhaps he should have tried Berlin. But a is crumbling. on the brink of everything – high school, adulthood, chance meeting with Amalia von Schalla brings new www.impacdublinaward.ie Eligible Titles 2014 possibilities for Delage—connections, her daughter did Minnie commit that made Daniel disregard her which was made into a film of the same name,The Elisabeth, and an avant garde composer. Now for fifteen years? And will Daniel’s identification Eye in the Door, which won the Guardian Fiction travelling home on a container ship, with Elisabeth, with a child on trial for murder make him question Prize, and The Ghost Road, which won the Booker the real story is about to begin. everything he ever believed in? Prize. She lives in Durham.

Murray Bail was born in Adelaide in 1941. Lisa Ballantyne was born in Scotland. She spent In the Kingdom of Men He has won numerous awards, including the most of her twenties working and living in China, Commonwealth Writers Prize and the Miles before returning to the UK in 2002, to work in Kim Barnes Franklin Literary Award for Eucalyptus. His novel, Higher Education. She lives in Glasgow; this is her Nominated by: The Pages, was published in 2008 to great acclaim. first novel. Multnomah County Library, Portland, USA

The Detour Emmaus 1967. Gin Mitchell knows a better life awaits her when she marries hometown hero Mason McPhee. Gerbrand Bakker Alessandro Baricco Raised in a two-room shack by her Oklahoma Translated from the original Dutch by David Colmer Translated from the original Italian by Ann Goldstein grandfather, a strict Methodist minister, Gin never Nominated by: Nominated by: believed that someone like Mason, a handsome Openbare Bibliotheek Amsterdam, The Bibliothèques Municipales, Genéve, Switzerland college boy, the pride of Shawnee, would look her Netherlands way. And nothing can prepare her for the world she The secular and the pious. The rich and the poor. Openbare Bibliotheek Eindhoven, The Netherlands and Mason step into when he takes a job with the Those with “a capacity for destiny” and those who The Libraries of The Hague / Public Libraries of Arabian American Oil company in Saudi Arabia. “cannot afford it.” Alessandro Baricco’s new novel, The Hague, The Netherlands Even among the veiled women and strict laws of Emmaus, is a world of stark contrasts, one in which Bibliotheek Utrecht, The Netherlands shariah, Gin’s life has become the stuff of fairy tales. four young men—all from proud, struggling families, But when a young Bedouin woman is found dead, A Dutch woman rents a remote farm in rural Wales. and all lusting after Andre, a hyper-sexual woman— washed up on the shores of the Persian Gulf, Gin’s She is a lecturer doing some research, and sets about are goaded from adolescence to manhood in a world closes in around her, and the one person she making the farmhouse more homely. When she torrent of exploits and crises, sexual awakenings and trusts is nowhere to be found. arrives there are ten geese living in the garden but morbid depressions, naivety and fatalism. one by one they disappear. Perhaps it’s the work of a Kim Barnes is the author of two memoirs and two A brilliant portrait of the perils and uncertainties of local fox. She has fled from an unbearable situation previous novels, including A Country Called Home, youth and faith, Emmaus is a remarkable novel from having recently confessed to an affair with one of her which received the 2009 PEN Center USA Literary one of the very best writers in Europe students. In Amsterdam, her stunned husband forms Award in fiction and was named a best book of 2008. a strange partnership with a detective who agrees to Alessandro Baricco is a writer, director, and Her first memoir, In the Wilderness, was nominated help him trace her. They board the ferry to Hull on performer. He has won the Prix Médicis Étranger in for the Pulitzer Prize. Barnes is a professor of writing Christmas Eve. France and the Selezione Campiello, Viareggio, and at the University of Idaho. Palazzo al Bosco prizes in Italy. Back on the farm, a young man out walking with his Alfa Romeo 1300 and Other Miracles dog injures himself and stays the night, then ends up Toby’s Room staying longer. Yet something is deeply wrong. Does Fabio Bartolomei he know what he is getting himself into? And what Pat Barker Translated from the original Italian by Antony Shugaar will happen when her husband and the policeman Nominated by: Nominated by: arrive? Redbridge Libraries, London, United Kingdom Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma, Italy

Gerbrand Bakker worked as a subtitler for nature Toby and Elinor, brother and sister, friends and Diego is a forty-something car salesman with a films before becoming a gardener. His debut novel confidants, are sharers of a dark secret, carried from talent for telling half-truths. Fausto sells watches The Twin won the International IMPAC Dublin the summer of 1912 into the battlefields of France over the phone. Claudio manages (barely) his family- Literary Award and has been made into a film. and wartime London in 1917. owned neighborhood supermarket. The characteristic common to each of these three men is their abject When Toby is reported ‘Missing, Believed Killed’, The Guilty One mediocrity. Yet, mediocrity being the mother of another secret casts a lengthening shadow over outrageous invention, they embark on a project that Lisa Ballantyne Elinor’s world: how exactly did Toby die – and why? would be too ambitious in scope for any single one Nominated by: Elinor’s fellow student Kit Neville was there in the of them, let alone all three together. They decide to Newcastle Libraries, United Kingdom fox-hole when Toby met his fate, but has secrets of flee the city and to open a rustic holiday farmhouse his own to keep. Enlisting the help of former lover A little boy was found dead in a children’s playground... in the Italian countryside outside Naples. Things Paul Tarrant, Elinor determines to uncover the truth. would have been challenging enough for these three Daniel Hunter has spent years defending lost causes Only then can she finally close the door to Toby’s unlikely entrepreneurs, but when a local mobster as a solicitor in London. But his life changes when room. arrives and demands they pay him protection money he is introduced to Sebastian, an eleven-year-old Moving from the Slade School of Art to Queen things go from bad to worse. Now their ordinary (if accused of murdering an innocent young boy. Mary’s Hospital, where surgery and art intersect in wrongheaded) attempt to run a small business in an As he plunges into the muddy depths of Sebastian’s the rebuilding of the shattered faces of the wounded, area that organized crime syndicates consider their troubled home life, Daniel thinks back to his own Toby’s Room is a riveting drama of identity, damage, own becomes a quixotic act of defiance. childhood in foster care – and to Minnie, the woman intimacy and loss. Fabio Bartolomei works in advertising and lives in whose love saved him, until she, too, betrayed him so Pat Barker’s books include the highly acclaimed Rome. Alfa Romeo 1300 and Other Miracles is his first badly that he cut her out of his life. But what crime Regeneration trilogy: comprising Regeneration, novel. www.impacdublinaward.ie Eligible Titles 2014

The Teleportation Accident without protection and without any choice. Now he recovering her last book manuscript. He comes back must run: from his home, from his family, from the declaring himself empty handed – but actually he has woman he loves. Finding them again will be the race found a private and revealing document, a confession of his life. Evoking the raw beauty of Rwanda and in letters, of a strong and beloved woman’s life like no the tragedy of its recent past, Running the Rift is a other in the 19th century. truly stunning novel of a people’s trauma, of lives lost, April Bernard is an American poet. She has worked and of loves salvaged. as a senior editor at Vanity Fair, Manhattan inc. Naomi Benaron holds an MFA from Antioch and Premiere. She currently teaches at Skidmore University and an MS in earth sciences from College in Saratoga Springs, New York. Her work Scripps Institute of Oceanography. She teaches has appeared in The New Yorker, The Boston Review, for UCLA Extension Writers’ Program, mentors and The New York Review of Books. for the Afghan Women’s Writing Project, and has worked extensively with genocide survivor groups Kaltenburg in Rwanda. She has won the G.S. Sharat Chandra Marcel Beyer Prize for Short Fiction and the Lorian Hemingway Translated from the original German by Alan Bance Short Story Competition. Nominated by: The Woman Who Dived into the Heart of Zentral – u. Landesbibliothek Berlin, Germany the World Marcel Beyer brings to life both an individual and Sabrina Berman a whole world: the zoologist Ludwig Kaltenburg, Translated from the original Spanish by Lisa Dillman loosely based on Nobel Prize–winner Konrad Lorenz, and his institute for research into animal Nominated by: behavior. Wojewódzka i Miejska Biblioteka Publiczna, Lódz, Ned Beauman Poland Hermann Funk first meets Kaltenburg when still Nominated by: a child in Posen in the 1930s. Hermann’s father, a In the wake of her sister’s death, Isabelle moves from Christchurch City Libraries, New Zealand botanist, and Kaltenburg are close friends, but a rift her home in California to her birthplace in Mexico occurs. In 1945, fleeing the war, the Funks perish When you haven’t had sex in a long time, it feels like to take over the running of the family tuna company. in the Dresden bombing, and Hermann finds his the worst thing that could ever happen to anyone. If There, she discovers a wild child – a thing with no way to Kaltenburg’s newly established institute. you’re living in Germany in the 1930s, it probably name, who turns out to be the autistic niece she He becomes Kaltenburg’s protégé, embracing the isn’t. never knew she had. Institute’s unconventional methods. Yet parts of But that’s no consolation to Egon Loeser, whose So she sets herself the task of turning it into a Kaltenburg’s past life remain unclear. Was he a carnal misfortunes will push him from the human being – a human being named Karen. To member of the Nazi Party? Does he believe his experimental theatres of Berlin to the absinthe bars start, she tries to get her to say her first word: ‘Me’. discoveries about aggression in animals also apply to of Paris to the physics laboratories of Los Angeles, humans? Why has he erased the years in Posen from And then begins the greatest journey of all, as trying all the while to solve two mysteries: whether his official biography? Karen learns how to become ‘Me’. It is a voyage of it was really a deal with Satan that claimed the life discovery that will take her to the bottom of the Marcel Beyer was born and raised in Cologne. The of his hero, the great Renaissance stage designer ocean, and into the heart of the world. author of several novels and collections of poems, he Adriano Lavicini; and why a handsome, clever, has received numerous awards and was named one charming, modest guy like him can’t, just once in a Sabina Berman lives in Mexico and is a highly of the best young novelists in the world by the New while, get himself laid. acclaimed playwright and screenwriter. The Woman Yorker. He lives in Dresden. Who Dived into the Heart of the World is her first Ned Beauman’s debut novel, Boxer, Beetle was novel. shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and won a number of awards. In 2011 he was chosen Miss Fuller by The Culture Show as one of the twelve Best New British Writers. The Teleportation Accident was April Bernard longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2012. Nominated by: Hartford Public Library, USA Running the Rift It is 1850. Margaret Fuller – feminist, journalist, Naomi Benaron orator, – is returning from Europe where she covered Nominated by: the Italian revolution for The New York Tribune. Cape Town Central Library, South Africa She is bringing home with her an Italian husband, the Count Ossoli, and their two-year-old son. But Jean Patrick Nkuba dreams of becoming the first this is not the gala return of a beloved American Rwandan to run in the Olympics. But Jean Patrick is heroine. This is a furtive, impoverished return under a Tutsi and his kind are not supposed to win. When a cloud of suspicion and controversy. When the ship the president’s assassination plummets the country founders in a hurricane off Long Island and Fuller into sudden and bloody chaos – Hutu against Tutsi, and her small family drown, her friends back home neighbour against neighbour – Jean Patrick is left send Henry David Thoreau to the wreck in hopes of www.impacdublinaward.ie Eligible Titles 2014

HHhH The Sandcastle Girls Lola Bensky Christopher Bohjalian Lily Brett Nominated by: Nominated by: Richland Library, Columbia, USA The State Library of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia

When Elizabeth Endicott, a wealthy young Lola Bensky is a nineteen-year-old rock journalist American, arrives in Aleppo, Syria, she has a diploma who irons her hair straight and asks a lot of from Mount Holyoke, a crash course in nursing, questions. A high-school dropout, she’s not sure and only the most basic grasp of the Armenian how she got the job – but she’s been sent by her language. It’s 1915, and Elizabeth has volunteered to Australian newspaper right to the heart of the help deliver food and medical aid to refugees of the London music scene at the most exciting time in Armenian Genocide during the First World War. music history: 1967. There she meets Armen, a young Armenian engineer Lola spends her days planning diets and interviewing who has lost his wife and infant daughter. After rock stars. In London, Mick Jagger makes her a leaving Aleppo and travelling into Egypt to join the cup of tea, Jimi Hendrix (possibly) propositions British Army, he begins to write Eliabeth letters, her and Cher borrows her false eyelashes. Lola has realizing that he has fallen in love. an irrepressible curiosity, but she begins to wonder Years later, their American granddaughter, Laura, whether the questions she asks these extraordinary embarks on a journey back through her family’s young musicians are really a substitute for questions history, uncovering a story of love, loss – and about her parents’ calamitous past that can’t be asked a wrenching secret that has been buried for or answered. As Lola moves on through marriage, generations. motherhood and psychoanalysis she discovers the question of what it means to be human is the hardest Chris Bohjalian is the critically acclaimed author one for anyone – including herself – to answer. Laurent Binet of sixteen books, including the New York Times Translated from the original French by Sam Taylor bestsellers: The Sandcastle Girls, Skeletons at the Feast, Lily Brett was born in Germany and moved to Nominated by: The Double Bind, and Midwives. His work has been Melbourne with her parents in 1948. She has Bibliothèque Municipale de Lyon, France translated into more than twenty-five languages. He published six works of fiction, seven books of poetry, Limerick City Library, Ireland lives in Vermont with his wife and daughter. and three essay collections to much critical acclaim Boston Public Library, USA in Australia and around the world. Waiting for Sunrise Cleveland Public Library, USA Tell the Wolves I’m Home William Boyd Two men have been enlisted to kill the head of the Carol Rifka Brunt Gestapo. This is Operation Anthropoid, Prague, Nominated by: 1942: two Czechoslovakian parachutists sent on a Stadt Bibliothek Salzburg, Austria Nominated by: Veria Central Public Library, Greece daring mission by London to assassinate Reinhard Vienna, 1913. Lysander Rief, a young English actor, Public Library of Cinncinnati & Hamilton County, Heydrich, chief of the Nazi secret services, ‘the walks through the city to his first appointment Cincinnati, USA most dangerous man in the Third Reich’. His boss with eminent psychiatrist, Dr Bensimon. Sitting New Hampshire State Library, Concord, USA is Heinrich Himmler but everyone in the SS says in the waiting room he is anxiously pondering the Houston Public Library, USA ‘Himmler’s brain is called Heydrich’, which in particularly intimate nature of his neurosis when a Seattle Public Library, USA German spells HHhH. young woman enters. Lysander is immediately drawn All the characters in HHhH are real. All the events to her strange, hazel eyes and her unusual, intense In this striking literary debut, Carol Rifka Brunt depicted are true. But alongside the nerve-shredding beauty. Her name is Hettie Bull. Their subsequent unfolds a moving story of love, grief, and renewal as preparations for the attack runs another story: when affair is both passionate and particularly destructive. two lonely people become the unlikeliest of friends and find that sometimes you don’t know you’ve lost you are a novelist writing about real people, how do Moving from Vienna to London’s West End, from someone until you’ve found them. you resist the temptation to make things up? HHhH the battlefields of France to hotel rooms in Geneva, is a panorama of the Third Reich told through the Waiting for Sunrise is a feverish and mesmerising 1987. There’s only one person who has ever truly life of one outstandingly brutal man, a story of journey into the human psyche, a beautifully understood fourteen-year-old June Elbus, and that’s unbearable heroism and loyalty, revenge and betrayal. observed portrait of wartime Europe, a plot-twisting her uncle, the renowned painter Finn Weiss. Shy HHhH is Laurent Binet’s first novel. He lives and thriller and a literary tour de force. at school and distant from her older sister, June can only be herself in Finn’s company; he is her works in France. HHhH won the prestigious Prix William Boyd is the international award-winning godfather, confidant, and best friend. So when he Goncourt du Premier Roman and the Prix des author of eleven novels including A Good Man in dies of a mysterious illness June’s world is turned Lecteurs du Livre de Poche. Africa, An Ice-Cream War, Brazzaville Beach, Any upside down. But Finn’s death brings a surprise Human Heart, Restless, Ordinary Thunderstorms and, acquaintance into June’s life—someone who will most recently, the Sunday Times bestseller, Waiting help her to heal, and to question what she thinks for Sunrise. He lives in London and France. she knows about Finn, her family, and even her own heart.

www.impacdublinaward.ie Eligible Titles 2014

Carol Rifka Brunt’s work has appeared in several He is the author of numerous novels; in 2010 Spilt primitive environment, they battle the vicissitudes literary journals. She was one of three fiction writers Milk won both of Brazil’s leading literary prizes, the of history and the passage of time for the survival of who received the New Writing Ventures award. She Prêmio Jabuti and the Prêmio Portugal Telecom. He their love. received a generous Arts Council grant to write Tell lives in Rio de Janeiro. Alex Capus is a French-Swiss novelist who writes the Wolves I’m Home, her first novel. Originally from in German. He published his first novel Munzinger New York, she currently lives in England with her The Literature Express Pascha in 1997. His translated works include Sailing husband and three children. Lasha Bugadze by Starlight: In Search of Treasure Island and A Matter Translated from the original Georgian Spilt Milk of Time. Léon and Louise was longlisted for the by Maya Kiasashvili German Book Prize. Nominated by: The National Parliamentary Library of Georgia, The Chemistry of Tears Tbilisi Peter Carey At the heart of The Literature Express lies the love Nominated by: story between a Georgian author and his Polish Margarita Rudomino All-Russia State Library for translator’s wife. However, their romance is as Foreign Literature, Moscow, Russia unsuccessful as the central protagonist’s attempts at Redbridge Libraries, London, United Kingdom literary success. London 2010, Catherine Gehrig, conservator at This novel is about literature and writers – more the Swinburne museum, learns of the unexpected precisely – unknown and mediocre authors travelling death of her colleague and lover of thirteen years. together. A literary association has invited authors of As the mistress of a married man, she has to grieve various nationalities to a seminar and the narrative in private. Her boss at the museum, aware of follows their train jouney throughout Europe on the Catherine’s grief, gives her a special project – to piece literature express, a train specially chartered for the together both the mechanics and the story of an seminar. The novel describes the self-absorption of extraordinary and eerie automaton. the authors and their inability to communicate with The mechanical creature is a clockwork puzzle, one another. They are portrayed as inward-looking commissioned in nineteenth-century Germany by and largely disinterested in their fellow traveller’s an English man, Henry Brandling, as a ‘magical work. The Literature Express is a reflection on both amusement’ for his consumptive son. Linked by the literature and the unsuccessful author. mysterious automata, Catherine and Henry’s stories Chico Buarque Lasha Bugadze is the award winning author of intertwine across time to explore the mysteries of Translated from the original Portuguese by numerous novels and plays. Currently he is an author life and death, the miracle and catastrophe of human Alison Entrekin and presenter of radio and TV programs about invention and the body’s astonishing chemistry of Nominated by: literature and music. His plays, short stories and love and feeling. novels are translated into many different languages. Biblioteca Demonstrativa de Brasília – Fundacao Peter Carey received the Booker Prize for Oscar Biblioteca Nacional, Brazil Léon and Louise and Lucinda and again for The True History of Centenarian Eulalio Assumpcao has reached the end the Kelly Gang. His other honours include the Alex Capus of his long life. From his modest bed in a Rio public Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Miles Translated from the original German hospital, he grandly recounts his past to passing Franklin Literary Award. Born in Australia he now by John Brownjohn nurses, his visiting daughter and the whitewashed lives in New York City, where he is the director of ceiling. His eccentric stories are seemingly nothing Nominated by: the Hunter College program in creative writing. more than the ramblings of a dying man, yet as Bibliothèques Municipales, Genéve, Switzerland A Land More Kind Than Home he overlaps each confused memory, they begin to Katona József Library of Bács-Kiskun County, coalesce into a brilliant and bitter eulogy for himself Kecskemét, Hungary Wiley Cash and for Brazil. A life-long love affair that survives the tribulations Nominated by: Charting his own fall from aristocracy, Eulalio’s of two World Wars, Léon and Louise tells the story of New York Public Library, USA feverish monologue sprawls across the last century, Alex Capus’ French grandfather. San José Public Library, USA from his empire-building ancestors to his drug- Summer 1918. The First World War is drawing to For a curious boy like Jess Hall, growing up in dealing great-great grandson. He confronts his a close when Léon falls in love with Louise Janvier. Marshall means trouble when you get caught spying senator father who squandered the family fortune Both are severely wounded by German artillery on grown-ups. Adventurous and precocious, Jess is on women and cocaine, and recalls the imperious fire, are separated, and believe each other to be protective of his older brother, Christopher, a mute mother who he always disappointed; but as he dead. Briefly reunited two decades later, the lovers whom everyone calls Stump. Though their mother drifts through each shifting episode, he never stops are torn apart again by Louise’s refusal to destroy has warned them not to snoop, Stump can’t help searching for Matilde, the girl with cinnamon skin, Léon’s marriage and the German invasion of France. sneaking a look at something he’s not supposed to – who danced her way into his heart and then broke it Through occupied Paris during the Second World an act that will have repercussions. It’s a wrenching when she disappeared. War, where Léon struggles against the abhorrent event that thrusts Jess into an adulthood for which Born 1944 in Rio de Janeiro, Chico Buarque, is a tasks imposed on him by the SS, and the wilds of he’s not prepared. He now knows that a new singer, guitarist, composer, dramatist, writer and poet. Africa, where Louise confronts the hardships of her www.impacdublinaward.ie Eligible Titles 2014 understanding can bring not only danger and evil – A Model World, Wonder Boys, Werewolves in Their Gerard Collins is a writer and teacher whose fiction but also the possibility of freedom and deliverance. Youth, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, has appeared in various journals and won a handful Summerland (a novel for children), The Final Solution, of literary prizes, including the 2012 Ches Crosbie A Land More Kind Than Home is a haunting tale of The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, Maps and Legends, Barristers / Newfoundland and Labrador Book courage in the face of cruelty and the power of love and Gentlemen of the Road. He lives in Berkeley, Award for Fiction and the Percy Janes First Novel to overcome the darkness that lives in us all. California, with his wife and children. Award. Wiley Cash is from western North Carolina and has a PhD in English from the University of Louisiana- Gold The Orchardist Lafayette. He has held residency positions at Yaddo Chris Cleave Amanda Coplin and the MacDowell Colony and teaches in the Nominated by: Nominated by: low-residency MFA program at Southern New Stadtbüchereien Düsseldorf, Germany Richland Library, Columbia, USA Hampshire University. He and his wife live in West Virginia. A Land More Kind Than Home is his first What would you sacrifice for the people you love? At the turn of the twentieth century, in a rural novel. stretch of the Pacific Northwest, a reclusive Kate and Zoe met at nineteen when they both made orchardist, William Talmadge, tends to apples and the cut for the national training program in track Telegraph Avenue apricots as if they were loved ones. A gentle man, he’s cycling. Now at thirty-two, the women are facing found solace in the sweetness of the fruit he grows their last and biggest race: the 2012 Olympics. and the quiet, beating heart of the land he cultivates. Kate is the more naturally gifted, but the demands One day, two teenage girls appear and steal his fruit of her life have a tendency to slow her down. Her from the market; they later return to the outskirts of eight-year-old daughter is fighting a recurrence his orchard to see the man who gave them no chase. of the leukemia that nearly killed her three years Feral, scared, and very pregnant, the girls take up on ago. Devoted and self-sacrificing Kate knows her Talmadge’s land and indulge in his deep reservoir of daughter is fragile, but at the height of her last compassion. Just as the girls begin to trust him, men frenzied months of training, might she be blind to arrive in the orchard with guns, and the shattering the most terrible prognosis? tragedy that follows will set Talmadge on an irrevocable course not only to save and protect but Intense, aloof Zoe’s compulsive need to win at any also to reconcile the ghosts of his own troubled past. cost has more than once threatened her friendship with Kate—and her own sanity. Will she allow her Amanda Coplin was born in Wenatchee, obsession, and the advantage she has over a harried, Washington. A recipient of residencies from the Fine anguished mother, to sever the bond they have Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, shared for more than a decade? and the Omi International Arts Center at Ledig House in Ghent, New York, she lives in Portland, Chris Cleave is the author of Incendiary and the Oregon. #1 New York Times bestseller Little Bee. He lives with his wife and three children in Kingston-upon- Questions of Travel Thames, England. Michelle de Kretser Michael Chabon Finton Moon Nominated by: Nominated by: The National Library of Australia, Canberra Richmond Public Library, USA Gerard Collins The State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, San José Public Library, USA Nominated by: Australia Newfoundland & Labrador Public Libraries, Archy Stallings and Nat Jaffe are longtime friends, St. John’s, Canada A mesmerising literary novel, Questions of Travel bandmates, and co-regents of Brokeland Records, a charts two very different lives. Laura travels the kingdom of used vinyl located in the borderlands of In this adult gothic fairytale Finton Moon is an world before returning to Sydney, where she works Berkeley and Oakland. Their wives, Gwen Shanks unusual child who feels like an alien. A gentle for a publisher of travel guides. Ravi dreams of and Aviva Roth-Jaffe, two semi-legendary midwives, soul growing up in the rough town of Darwin, being a tourist until he is driven from Sri Lanka by have welcomed more than a thousand newly minted Newfoundland, he lives with his strict Catholic devastating events. citizens into the dented utopia at whose heart—half mother and grandmother, lawless father and two tavern, half temple—stands Brokeland. older brothers. Around these two superbly drawn characters, a double narrative assembles an enthralling array of When ex–NFL quarterback Gibson Goode, the But Finton’s parents quickly discover that he is people, places and stories – from Theo, whose life fifth-richest black man in America, announces extraordinary—for he has been born with the plays out in the long shadow of the past, to Hana, an plans to build his latest Dogpile megastore on a ability to heal with his hands. As he grows older, his Ethiopian woman determined to reinvent herself in nearby stretch of Telegraph Avenue, Nat and Archy miraculous talent becomes more apparent and useful, Australia. fear it means certain doom for their vulnerable even as it isolates him further from those around little enterprise. Meanwhile, Aviva and Gwen also him. While Finton Moon wants nothing more than Michelle de Kretser illuminates travel, work and find themselves caught up in a battle for their to belong, he lives in a world that sees him as other, modern dreams in this brilliant evocation of the professional existence. and his greatest fear is that he will be trapped forever way we live now. Wonderfully written, Questions of with these people who both misunderstand and Travel is an extraordinary work of imagination – a Michael Chabon is the bestselling and Pulitzer abuse him. Prize–winning author of The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, www.impacdublinaward.ie Eligible Titles 2014 transformative, very funny and intensely moving Viola Di Grado was born in Catania, Italy. She now Critics Circle Award and won France’s Prix Medici. novel. lives and studies in London. 70% Acrylic 30% Wool Eggers is the founder and editor of McSweeney’s, an – winner of the 2011 Campiello First Novel Award independent publishing house. A native of Chicago, Award-winning author Michelle de Kretser was and a finalist for Italy’s most prestigious literary Eggers lives in Northern California with his wife born in Sri Lanka and lives in Australia. She is prize, The Strega – is her first book. and two children. honorary associate of the English Department at Sydney University, and has worked as an editor and a A Partial History of Lost Causes The Round House book reviewer. Questions of Travel is her fourth novel. Jennifer duBois The House I Loved Nominated by: Tatiana de Rosney Münchner Stadtbibliothek, Germany Nominated by: In St. Petersburg, Russia, world chess champion Katona József Library of Bács-Kiskun County, Aleksandr Bezetov begins a quixotic quest: He Kecskemét, Hungary launches a dissident presidential campaign against Vladimir Putin. He knows he will not win—and Paris, France: 1860s. Hundreds of houses are being that he is risking his life in the process—but a deeper razed, whole neighborhoods reduced to ashes. By conviction propels him forward. order of Emperor Napoleon III, Baron Haussmann has set into motion a series of large-scale renovations In Cambridge, Massachusetts, thirty-year-old that will permanently alter the face of old Paris, English lecturer Irina Ellison struggles for a molding it into a “modern city.” The reforms will sense of purpose. Irina is certain she has inherited erase generations of history—and in the midst of the Huntington’s disease—the same cruel illness that tumult, one woman, Rose Bazelet, will take a stand. ended her father’s life. When Irina finds an old, photocopied letter her father wrote to the young As others flee, she stakes her claim in the basement Aleksandr Bezetov, she makes a fateful decision. of the old house on rue Childebert. Attempting to Her father asked the chess prodigy a profound overcome the loneliness of her daily life, she begins question—How does one proceed in a lost cause?— to write letters to Armand, her beloved late husband. but never received an adequate reply. Leaving As she delves into the ritual of remembering, Rose is everything behind, Irina travels to Russia to find forced to come to terms with a secret that has been Bezetov and get an answer for her father, and for Louise Erdrich buried deep in her heart for thirty years. herself. Nominated by: Tatiana de Rosnay is the author of ten novels, Jennifer duBois’s A Partial History of Lost Causes Zentralbibliothek Zürich, Switzerland including The New York Times bestselling novels was one of the most acclaimed debuts of 2012. New Hampshire State Library, Concord, USA Sarah’s Key and A Secret Kept. Together with Dan DuBois was also named one of the National Book Milwaukee Public Library, USA Brown and Stieg Larsson, de Rosnay was named one Foundation’s 5 Under 35 authors. She is a graduate Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, USA of the top three fiction writers in Europe in 2010. of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Originally from Multnomah County Library, Portland, USA She lives with her husband and two children in Paris. Massachusetts, she now lives in Texas. Lincoln Library, Springfield, USA 70% Acrylic 30% Wool One Sunday in the spring of 1988, a woman living A Hologram for the King on a reservation in North Dakota is attacked. The Viola Di Grado Dave Eggers details of the crime are slow to surface as Geraldine Translated from the original Italian Coutts is traumatized and reluctant to relive or by Michael Reynolds Nominated by: Stadtbüchereien Düsseldorf, Germany reveal what happened, either to the police or to her Nominated by: Miami-Dade Public Library System, USA husband, Bazil, and thirteen-year-old son, Joe. While Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma, Italy Toronto Public Library, Canada his father, who is a tribal judge, endeavors to wrest Camelia, a young Italian woman, lives with her justice from a situation that defies his efforts, Joe sets In a rising Saudi Arabian city, far from weary, mother in Leeds, a city where it is always December. out with his trusted friends to get some answers of recession-scarred America, a struggling businessman She has dropped out of university and translates his own. Their quest takes them first to the Round pursues a last-ditch attempt to stave off foreclosure, instruction manuals for an Italian washing House, a sacred space and place of worship for the pay his daughter’s college tuition, and finally do machine manufacturer; her mother, Livia Mega, Ojibwe. And this is only the beginning. something great. In A Hologram for the King, Dave once a renowned flautist, spends her days inside Eggers takes us around the world to show how Written with undeniable urgency and illuminating photographing holes in the house. The lives of these one man fights to hold himself and his splintering the harsh realities of contemporary life in a two women have been undone by a calamity in their family together in the face of the global economy’s community where Ojibwe and white live uneasily recent past, and there seems little or no possibility gale-force winds. This taut, richly layered, and elegiac together, The Round House is a masterpiece of literary of ever finding their way back to a normal life. But novel is a powerful evocation of our contemporary fiction. one day Camelia meets Wen, a local shop owner. To moment—and a moving story of how we got here. win Camelia’s affections, Wen begins teaching her Louise Erdrich is the award-winning author of Chinese ideograms. Through this new language of Dave Eggers is the author of six previous books, thirteen novels as well as volumes of poetry, short signs and subtle variations Camelia learns to see the including Zeitoun, winner of the American Book stories, children’s books, and a memoir of early world differently and, in it, a chance for renewal. Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. What Is motherhood. Her novel Love Medicine won the the What was a finalist for the 2006 National Book National Book Critics Circle Award. She lives in www.impacdublinaward.ie Eligible Titles 2014

Minnesota and is the owner of Birchbark Books, an concept both metaphorically and literally appeals an elephant sanctuary in India but is determined independent bookstore. to humanity in a way that frees man from being the to force Anais to confront the circumstances of her consumer. birth before she goes. Sufficient Grace An emerging Pan-African novelist, Tariku Abas Jenni Fagan was born in Livingston, Scotland, and Amy Espeseth Etenesh was born in Addis Ababa. He wrote a lives in Edinburgh. A published poet, she has won Nominated by: play on the theme of Africa and its plights which awards from Arts Council England, Dewar Arts, and The State Library of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia was performed at Art’s Night by members of the Scottish Screen among others. She has twice been University Cultural Centre. Another of his plays, nominated for the Pushcart Prize and was shortlisted Ruth and her cousin Naomi live in rural Wisconsin, Andromeda: The Ethiopian Princess was staged by for the Dundee International Book Prize. part of an isolated religious community. The girls’ theatrical arts students at Addis Ababa University. lives are ruled by the rhythms of nature — the harsh A Possible Life winters, the hunting seasons, the harvesting of crops The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving — and by their families’ beliefs. Beneath the surface Sebastian Faulks of this closed, frozen world, hidden dangers lurk. Jonathan Evison Nominated by: Nominated by: The Free Library of Philadelphia, USA Then Ruth learns that Naomi harbours a terrible Multnomah County Library, Portland, USA secret. She searches for solace in the mysteries of the In Second World War Poland a young prisoner natural world: broken fawns, migrating birds, and Benjamin Benjamin has lost virtually everything— closes his eyes and pictures going to bat on a sunlit the strange fish deep beneath the ice. Can the girls’ his wife, his family, his home, his livelihood. With English cricket ground. prayers for deliverance be answered? few options, Ben enrolls in a night class called The Across the yard of a Victorian poorhouse, a man is Fundamentals of Caregiving, where he is instructed Sufficient Grace is a story of lost innocence and the too ashamed to acknowledge the son he gave away. in the art of inserting catheters and avoiding liability, unfailing bond between two young women. It is about professionalism, and on how to keep physical In a 19th century French village, an old servant at once devastating and beautiful, and ultimately and emotional distance between client and provider. understands – suddenly and with awe – the meaning transcendent. of the Bible story her master is reading to her. But when Ben is assigned to tyrannical nineteen- Born in rural Wisconsin, Amy Espeseth immigrated year-old Trevor, who is in the advanced stages of On a summer evening in the Catskills in 1971, a to Australia in the late 1990s and lives in Melbourne. Duchenne muscular dystrophy, he soon discovers skinny girl steps out of a Chevy with a guitar and A writer, publisher and academic, she is the recipient that the endless mnemonics and service plan with a song that will send shivers through her of the 2007 Felix Meyer Scholarship in Literature, checklists have done little to prepare him for the listeners’ skulls. the 2010 QUT Postgraduate Creative Writing Prize, reality of caring for a fiercely stubborn, sexually and the 2012 CAL Scribe Fiction Prize. Sufficient A few years from now, in Italy, a gifted scientist frustrated adolescent with an ax to grind with the Grace won the 2009 Victorian Premier’s Literary discovers links between time and the human brain world at large. Award for an unpublished manuscript. and between her lover’s novel and his life. Bursting with energy, this big-hearted and inspired Throughout the five masterpieces of fiction that Eyes and Mist novel ponders life’s terrible surprises and the heart’s make up A Possible Life, exquisitely drawn and uncanny capacity to mend. Tariku Abas Etenesh unforgettable characters risk their bodies, hearts and Nominated by: Jonathan Evison is the author of All About Lulu, minds in pursuit of the manna of human connection. Ethiopian National Archives and Library Agency, which won the Washington State Book Award. In Sebastian Faulks is the author of ten novels. They Ethiopia 2009, he was the recipient of a Richard Buckley include the UK number one bestseller A Week in Fellowship from the Christopher Isherwood Eyes and Mist is an experimental novel that tries December; Human Traces; On Green Dolphin Street; Foundation. Born in San Jose, California, he now to create discussion about some of the prominent Charlotte Gray, and the classic Birdsong, which has lives on an island in Western Washington. issues of our world today: the issue of energy and its sold more than three million copies and was recently impacts in our everyday lives and the need to change The Panopticon adapted for television. He lives in London with his them for the higher ideals of human solidarity. wife and their three children. Jenni Fagan Energy is noted in the book, as both the euphemism Nominated by: The Intentions Book and literal reference. Metaphorically, energy refers Liverpool City Libraries, United Kingdom to the driving forces behind the actions of human Gigi Fenster beings with/against fellow human beings, the fuel Anais Hendricks, fifteen, is in the back of a police Nominated by: of the island mentality that feeds on the ideals of car, headed for the Panopticon, a home for chronic Auckland Libraries, New Zealand labeling ‘others’ for ones life and existence. young offenders. She can’t remember the events that The Intentions Book is a tender and funny novel about led her here, but across town a policewoman lies in a And in literal sense, energy refers to the way personal love and communication, and the ways our families coma and there is blood on Anais’s school uniform. and social lives of the various economies in the world shape us. Smart, funny and fierce, Anais is a counter-culture are becoming subservient puppets to the whims of outlaw. She is also a child who has been let down, or Morris Goldberg is a man who can’t cry. Semi- fossil oil production. And in being so, collectively worse, by just about every adult she has ever met. retired from his career as a metadata analyst, he lives compromising the sublime values of human alone and conducts imaginary conversations with his solidarity: justice, equality, peace, morality. The residents of the Panopticon form intense bonds recently-deceased wife, Sadie. Then news arrives that and Anais finds herself part of an ad hoc family Eyes and Mist thus urges that it is high time for the his daughter Rachel is missing in the bush, with bad there. Much more suspicious are the social workers, world to look seriously at the solutions proposed by weather on the way. especially Helen, who is about to leave her job for Nikola Tesla, half a century ago, as the free energy www.impacdublinaward.ie Eligible Titles 2014

While Morris waits for news, he thinks back over intense, and generous-hearted story about two Patrick Flanery was born in California and raised his life, and as memory and dream start to merge, friends. in Omaha, Nebraska. He worked for three years in key scenes from his childhood and marriage play the film industry before moving to the UK, where The story begins in the 1950s, in a poor but vibrant out in his imagination and the urgent questions he completed a doctorate in Twentieth-Century neighborhood on the outskirts of Naples. Growing of a lifetime press forward. What happens to us in English Literature at the University of Oxford. As up on these tough streets the two girls learn to rely moments of crisis? Are we capable of change? How well as publishing scholarly articles on British and on each other ahead of anyone or anything else. can we express our true feelings? How do we survive South African literature he has written for Slightly As they grow, as their paths repeatedly diverge the endless dance of estrangement and intimacy? Foxed and The Times Literary Supplement. He lives and converge, Elena and Lila remain best friends. in London. Gigi Fenster was born in South Africa. She has a Through the lives of these two women, Ferrante tells Masters in Creative Writing from the Institute of the story of a neighborhood, a city, and a country as Gone Girl Modern Letters, Victoria University of Wellington, it is transformed in ways that, in turn, also transform and her short stories have been published in various the relationship between her protagonists, the Gillian Flynn literary journals in New Zealand and abroad. She unforgettable Elena and Lila. Nominated by: lives in Wellington with her husband and two Dunedin Public Libraries, New Zealand Elena Ferrante was born in Naples. She is the daughters. The Intentions Book is her first novel. author of The Days of Abandonment, which the New On a warm summer morning in North Carthage, 419 York Times described as “stunning,” and two other Missouri, it is Nick and Amy Dunne’s fifth novels, Troubling Love, and The Lost Daughter. wedding anniversary. Presents are being wrapped Will Ferguson and reservations are being made when Nick’s clever Nominated by: Absolution and beautiful wife disappears from their rented Calgary Public Library, Canada McMansion on the Mississippi River. Under mounting pressure from the police and the media— A car tumbles down a snowy ravine. Accident or as well as Amy’s fiercely doting parents—the town suicide? golden boy parades an endless series of lies, deceits, On the other side of the world, a young woman and inappropriate behavior. Nick is oddly evasive, walks out of a sandstorm in sub-Saharan Africa. In and he’s definitely bitter—but is he really a killer? the labyrinth of the Niger Delta, a young boy learns With his twin sister, Margo, at his side, Nick stands to survive by navigating through the gas flares and by his innocence. Trouble is, if Nick didn’t do it, oil spills of a ruined landscape. In the seething heat where is that beautiful wife? of Lagos City, a criminal cartel scours the internet looking for victims. With her razor-sharp writing and trademark psychological insight, Gillian Flynn delivers a Lives intersect, worlds collide, a family falls apart. fast-paced, devilishly dark, and ingeniously plotted And it all begins with a single email: “Dear Sir, I am thriller that confirms her status as one of the hottest the daughter of an exiled Nigerian diplomat, and I need writers around. your help ...” Gillian Flynn’s debut novel, Sharp Objects, was 419 takes readers behind the scene of the world’s an Edgar Award finalist and the winner of two of most insidious internet scam. When Laura’s father Britain’s Dagger Awards. She lives in Chicago with gets caught up in one such swindle and pays with her husband, Brett Nolan, and a rather giant cat his life, she is forced to leave the comfort of North named Roy. America to make a journey deep into the dangerous back streets and alleyways of the Lagos underworld Canada to confront her father’s killer. What she finds there Patrick Flanery Richard Ford will change her life forever... Nominated by: Nominated by: Travel writer and novelist Will Ferguson is the Bergen Offentlige Bibliotek, Norway Bibliotheken der Stadt Mainz, Germany author of several award-winning memoirs and In her garden, ensconced in the lush vegetation of Cork City Libraries, Ireland novels. His work has been published in more than the Western Cape, Clare Wald, world-renowned Waterford City Libraries, Ireland twenty languages. He is a three-time winner of the author, mother, critic, takes up her pen and confronts Universitätsbibliothek Bern, Switzerland Leacock Medal. her life. Sam Leroux has returned to South Africa Kansas City Public Library, USA to embark upon a project that will establish his My Brilliant Friend Free Library of Philadelphia, USA reputation – he is to write Clare’s biography. But Richmond Public Library, USA Elena Ferrante how honest is she prepared to be? Was she complicit San Diego Public Libraries, USA Translated from the original Italian by Ann Goldstein in crimes lurking in South Africa’s past; is she an Seattle Public Libraries, USA Nominated by: accomplice or a victim? Are her crimes against In 1956, Dell Parsons’ family came to a stop in Great Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale Firenze, her family real or imagined? As Sam and Clare Falls, Montana, the way many military families did Florence, Italy turn over the events of her life, she begins to seek following the war. It was more bad instincts and bad Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma, Italy reconciliation, absolution. But in the stories she weaves and the truth just below the surface of her luck that Dell’s parents decided to rob the bank. They A modern masterpiece from one of Italy’s most shimmering prose, lie Sam’s own ghosts. Absolution is weren’t reckless people. acclaimed authors, My Brilliant Friend is a rich, a debut of extraordinary strength and power. www.impacdublinaward.ie Eligible Titles 2014

In the days following the arrest, Dell is saved by village and all that remains are the ruins of Tyuoni at For readers who loved Room and The Curious Incident a family friend before the authorities think to the Bandelier National Monument in New Mexico. of the Dog in the Night-Time: a heartwarming, arrive. Driving across the Montana border into heartbreaking story of love, loyalty and the power In this work of fiction, Jopin, an eighty-year-old Saskatchewan his life hurtles towards the unknown, of the imagination – a novel perfect for anyone who elder desperate for an answer, embarks on a prayer towards a hotel in a deserted town, towards the ever had a friend... real or otherwise. quest that takes him on a chain of events which will violent and enigmatic American Arthur Remlinger, unveil the fate of Tyuoni. Deer-tracker, his pre-teen Matthew Green is a schoolteacher with Teacher of and towards Canada itself – a landscape of rescue grandson, and Knee-nose, a young spotted deer, help the Year credentials to his name. He has one Master’s and abandonment. But as Dell discovers, in this new Jopin deal with Chief Salamander’s questionable degree and is working on a second. He lives in world of secrets and upheaval, he is not the only one actions and motives as the tribe journeys on a Connecticut with his wife and daughter, plus a dog whose own past lies on the other side of a border. treacherous and intriguing odyssey. and cat. Richard Ford was born in Jackson, Mississippi. He Leandro Thomas Gonzales is now retired from has published seven novels and three collections of Arcadia Los Alamos National Laboratory where he was stories, including The Sportswriter, Independence Day, a mathematician, nuclear physicist, and engineer. Lauren Groff A Multitude of Sins and, most recently, The Lay of the Having authored many technical papers, he now Nominated by: Land. Independence Day was awarded the Pulitzer enjoys other interests such as traveling and writing Boston Public Library, USA Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. fiction. Winnipeg Public Library, Canada Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk The Fault in Our Stars In the fields of western New York State in the 1970s, Ben Fountain a few dozen idealists set out to live off the land, John Green founding a commune centered on the grounds of Nominated by: Nominated by: a decaying mansion called Arcadia House. Arcadia Kansas City Public Library, USA Veria Central Public Library, Greece follows this romantic utopian dream from its hopeful Milwaukee Public Library, USA Timaru District Libraries, New Zealand start through its heyday. Arcadia’s inhabitants include Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, USA Denver Public Library, USA Handy, the charismatic leader; his wife, Astrid, a A ferocious firefight with Iraqi insurgents, three Pikes Peak Library District, Colorado Springs, USA midwife; Abe, a master carpenter; Hannah, a baker minutes and forty-three seconds of intense warfare San Francisco Public Library, USA and historian; and Abe and Hannah’s only child, caught on tape by an embedded Fox News crew— Bit. While Arcadia rises and falls, Bit, too, ages and Despite the tumor-shrinking medical miracle that has transformed the eight surviving men of Bravo changes. He falls in love with Helle, Handy’s lovely, has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been Squad into America’s most sought-after heroes. For troubled daughter. And eventually he must face the anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed the past two weeks, the Bush administration has world beyond Arcadia. upon diagnosis. But when a gorgeous plot twist sent them on a media-intensive nationwide Victory named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Lauren Groff is the author of the New York Tour to reinvigorate public support for the war. Now, Kid Support Group, Hazel’s story is about to be Times bestselling novel The Monsters of Templeton on this chilly and rainy Thanksgiving, the Bravos completely rewritten. and the critically acclaimed short story collection are guests of America’s Team, the Dallas Cowboys, Delicate Edible Birds. She has won Pushcart and slated to be part of the halftime show alongside the Insightful, bold, irreverent, and raw, The Fault in Our PEN/O. Henry prizes, and has been shortlisted superstar pop group Destiny’s Child. Stars is award-winning-author John Green’s most for the Orange Prize for New Writers. She lives in ambitious and heartbreaking work yet, brilliantly Among the Bravos is Specialist William Lynn, a Gainesville, Florida, with her husband and two sons. exploring the funny, thrilling, and tragic business of nineteen-year-old Texas native. Over the course being alive and in love. of this day, Billy will begin to understand difficult The Big Music truths about himself, his country, his struggling John Green is an award-winning, New York Times Kirsty Gunn family, and his brothers-in-arms—soldiers both dead bestselling author whose many accolades include the Nominated by: and alive. Poignant, riotously funny, and exquisitely Printz Medal, a Printz Honor, and the Edgar Award. Liverpool City Libraries, United Kingdom heartbreaking, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk is a He has twice been a finalist for the LA Times Book Wellington City Libraries, New Zealand devastating portrait of our time. Prize. John lives with his family in Indianapolis, Indiana. ‘The hills only come back the same: I don’t mind …’ Ben Fountain grew up in North Carolina and lives begins Kirsty Gunn’s The Big Music, a novel that in Dallas, Texas. He is the author of a short story Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend takes us to a new understanding of how fiction can collection, Brief Encounters with Che Guevara. Billy affect us. Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk is his first novel. Matthew Green Nominated by: Presented as a collection of found papers, appendices Follow the Spinning Sun Timaru District Libraries, New Zealand and notes, The Big Music tells the story of John Sutherland of ‘The Grey House’, who is dying Thomas Gonzales My name is Budo. I have been alive for 5 years. 5 and creating in the last days of his life a musical Nominated by: years is a very long time for someone like me to be composition that will define it. Yet he has little Regional Library of Karviná, Karviná-Mizerov, alive. Max gave me my name. Max is 8 years old. He idea of how his tune will echo or play out into the Czech Republic is the only human person who can see me. I know world – and as the book moves inevitably through what Max knows, and some things he doesn’t. I Living in one of the most beautiful places on Earth, its themes of death and birth, change and stasis, know that Max is in danger. And I know that I am the Anasazi Indians enjoyed a good and bountiful the sound of his solitary story comes to merge and the only one who can save him. life. Yet, for some reason, they abandoned their connect with those around him.

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Kirsty Gunn has written five works of fiction, Helene Hegemann was born in 1992 and lives in and the organist, respectively, of the only church on including short stories and a collection of fragments Berlin. Axolotl Roadkill is her first novel. the tiny island of Finø. Known for fabricating cheap and meditations. Translated in over twelve territories, miracles to strengthen their congregation’s faith, her books have been broadcast, turned into film and The Dog Stars they have been in trouble before. But this time their dance theatre and are the recipient of various prizes Peter Heller children suspect they are up to mischief on a far and awards. She lives in London and Scotland with greater scale. Nominated by: her husband and two daughters. Chicago Public Library, USA When Peter and Tilte learn that scientific and Painter of Silence Denver Public Library, USA religious leaders from around the world are assembling in Copenhagen for a conference, they Hig somehow survived the flu pandemic that Georgina Harding know their parents are up to something. Peter and killed everyone he knows. Now his wife is gone, Nominated by: Tilte’s quest to find them exposes conspiracies, his friends are dead, and he lives in the hangar of a Redbridge Libraries, London, United Kingdom terrorist plots and much more along the way. small abandoned airport with his dog, Jasper, and a Iasi, Romania, the early 1950s. A nameless man is mercurial, gun-toting misanthrope named Bangley. Part adventure story, part study of human nature, found on the steps of a hospital. Deaf and mute, he The Elephant Keepers’ Children is a delightful and But when a random transmission beams through the is unable to communicate until a young nurse called thought-provoking novel. radio of his 1956 Cessna, the voice ignites a hope Safta brings paper and pencils with which he can deep inside him that a better life exists outside their Born in 1957, Peter Høeg published his first novel draw. Slowly, painstakingly, memories appear on the tightly controlled perimeter. Risking everything, in 1988, having followed various callings – dancer, page. he flies past his point of no return and follows its actor, fencer, sailor, mountaineer – before turning The memories are Safta’s also. For the man is static-broken trail, only to find something that is seriously to writing. His novels Miss Smilla’s Feeling Augustin, son of the cook at the manor house which both better and worse than anything he could ever for Snow and The Quiet Girl were published to great was Safta’s family home. Born six months apart, they hope for. international acclaim. grew up with a connection that bypassed words. Peter Heller holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ But while Augustin’s world remained the same size May We Be Forgiven Workshop in both fiction and poetry. An award- Safta’s expanded to embrace languages, society – and winning adventure writer and longtime contributor A. M. Homes a fleeting love, one long, hot summer. to NPR, Heller is also the author of several Nominated by: But then came war, and in its wake a brutal Stalinist nonfiction books, including Kook, The Whale Warriors, The State Library of South Australia, Adelaide regime, and nothing would remain the same. and Hell or High Water: Surviving Tibet’s Tsangpo Harold Silver has spent a lifetime watching his River. He lives in Denver, Colorado. Georgina Harding is the author of three novels, The younger brother, George, a taller, smarter, and Solitude of Thomas Cave, The Spy Game and Painter of The Elephant Keepers’ Children more successful high-flying TV executive, acquire a Silence which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize covetable wife, two kids, and a beautiful home in the for Fiction 2012. She has also written two non- suburbs of New York City. But when George loses fiction books, In Another Europe and Tranquebar: A control the result is an act of violence so shocking Season in South India. She lives in London and Essex. that both brothers are hurled into entirely new lives in which they both must seek absolution. Axolotl Roadkill Harry finds himself suddenly playing parent to his Helene Hegemann brother’s two adolescent children, tumbling down Translated from the original German the rabbit hole of Internet sex, dealing with aging by Katy Derbyshire parents who move through time like travelers on Nominated by: a fantastic voyage. As Harry builds a twenty-first- Zentral – u. Landesbibliothek Berlin, Germany century family created by choice rather than biology, we become all the more aware of the ways in which ‘Horrible lives are a godsend,’ writes 16-year-old our history, both personal and political, can become Mifti in her diary. Since the death of her mother, she our destiny and either compel us to repeat our errors has been living in Berlin in an increasingly dire state or be the catalyst for change. of disarray. Diagnosed as a ‘pseudo stress-debilitated’ problem child, she becomes enmeshed in the Berlin A.M. Homes is the author of novels including This party scene, surviving her so called life through a Book Will Save Your Life, Music For Torching and haze of sex, drugs and club culture. The End of Alice, as well as short-story collections, the travel memoir Los Angeles: People, Places and The What sets Mifti apart is her hypersensitivity and Castle on the Hill, and the artist’s book Appendix A: her open, questioning curiosity about an older An Elaboration on the Novel the End of Alice. generation that doesn’t seem to be able to care for Peter Høeg its children. Torn between genius and madness, she Translated from the original Danish by Martin Aitken delves into the language of adults, their conventions and toys with what she calls, ‘the general decay of Nominated by: their worlds, where the pursuit of prosperity has led Copenhagen Central Library, Denmark to neglect’. Peter and Tilte are trying to track down two notorious criminals: their parents. They are the pastor

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In One Person The Orphan Master’s Son and adaptations, and many fine novels. Her novels have been published in Australia, America and the John Irving Adam Johnson United Kingdom. She co-founded the Auckland Nominated by: Nominated by: Writers and Readers Festival with Peter Wells in Muntpunt, Belgium Winnipeg Public Library, Canada 1999 and is a trustee of the festival. Stadtbücherei Frankfurt am Main, Germany Boston Public Library, USA Stockholm Public Library, Sweden Cleveland Public Library, USA A Lady Cyclist’s Guide to Kashgar New Hampshire State Library, Concord, USA A compelling novel of desire, secrecy, and sexual Suzanne Joinson Houston Public Library, USA identity, In One Person is a story of unfulfilled Nominated by: Milwaukee Public Library, USA love – tormented, funny, and affecting – and an Stadtbuchereien Dusseldorf, Germany impassioned embrace of our sexual differences. Billy, Pak Jun Do is the haunted son of a lost mother—a It is 1923. Evangeline (Eva) English and her sister the bisexual narrator and main character, tells the singer “stolen” to Pyongyang—and an influential Lizzie are missionaries heading for the ancient Silk tragicomic story (lasting more than half a century) father who runs Long Tomorrows, a work camp Road city of Kashgar. Though Lizzie is on fire with of his life as a ‘sexual suspect’, a phrase first used for orphans. There the boy is given his first taste of her religious calling, Eva’s motives are not quite as by John Irving in 1978 – in his landmark novel of power, picking which orphans eat first and which noble, but with her green bicycle and a commission ‘terminal cases’, The World According to Garp. will be lent out for manual labor. Recognized for from a publisher to write A Lady Cyclist’s Guide to his loyalty and keen instincts, Jun Do comes to the John Irving’s In One Person is a poignant tribute Kashgar, she is ready for adventure. attention of superiors in the state, rises in the ranks, to Billy’s friends and lovers – a theatrical cast of and starts on a road from which there will be no In present day London, a young woman, Frieda, characters who defy category and convention. Not return. returns from a long trip abroad to find a man least, In One Person is an intimate and unforgettable sleeping outside her front door. She gives him a portrait of the solitariness of a bisexual man who is Considering himself “a humble citizen of the greatest blanket and a pillow, and in the morning finds the dedicated to making himself ‘worthwhile’. nation in the world,” Jun Do becomes a professional bedding neatly folded and an exquisite drawing of a kidnapper who must navigate the shifting rules, John Irving is the author of thirteen novels bird with a long feathery tail on her wall. Tayeb, in arbitrary violence, and baffling demands of his including The World According to Garp, The Hotel New flight from his Yemeni homeland, befriends Frieda Korean overlords in order to stay alive. Driven to Hampshire and A Prayer for Owen Meaney. His novels and, when she learns she has inherited the contents the absolute limit of what any human being could are translated into thirty-five languages, and he has of an apartment belonging to a dead woman she endure, he boldly takes on the treacherous role of had nine international bestsellers. John Irving has has never heard of, they embark on an unexpected rival to Kim Jong Il in an attempt to save the woman three children and lives in Vermont and Toronto. journey together. he loves. Suzanne Joinson works in the literature department The Snow Child Adam Johnson teaches creative writing at Stanford of the British Council. In 2007 she won the New University. His fiction has appeared in Esquire, The Eowyn Ivey Writing Ventures Award for Creative Non-Fiction Paris Review, Harper’s, Tin House, Granta, and Nominated by: for Laila Ahmed. She is studying for a PhD in Playboy, as well as The Best American Short Stories. Stichting Bibliotheek Rotterdam, The Netherlands Creative Writing at Goldsmiths, University of His other works include Emporium, a short-story The Library of Birmingham, United Kingdom London, and lives by the sea on the South Coast of collection, and the novel Parasites Like Us. He lives in England. Alaska, the 1920s. Jack and Mabel have staked San Francisco. everything on a fresh start in a remote homestead, The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed The Open World but the wilderness is a stark place, and Mabel is Out of the Window and Disappeared haunted by the baby she lost many years before. Stephanie Johnson When a little girl appears mysteriously on their land, Jonas Jonasson Nominated by: each is filled with wonder, but also foreboding – is Translated from the original Swedish by Rod Bradbury Auckland Libraries, New Zealand she what she seems, and can they find room in their Nominated by: hearts for her? London 1866. Elizabeth Smith is struggling to Stadt Bibliothek Salzburg, Austria survive when she hears that her former New Zealand Stadtbücherei Frankfurt am Main, Germany Named after a character from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The employers, Judge and Lady Martin, are returning Münchner Stadtbibliothek, Germany Lord of the Rings, Eowyn Ivey currently works at an to England. Accompanied by her dear friend, the Cork City Libraries, Ireland independent bookstore in Palmer, Alaska. Several lunatic Reverend Cotton, she makes a pilgrimage to Jamaica Library Service, Kingston of her short stories have been published in the settle old scores. Elizabeth is also accompanied by anthology, Cold Flashes, and the literary journal, Sitting quietly in his room in an old people’s home, liberal doses of opiates and two small ghosts, walking Cirque. Eowyn lives in Alaska with her husband Allan Karlsson is waiting for a party he doesn’t want by her side, whispering, murmuring, calling her. and two daughters. Her debut novel The Snow Child to begin. His one-hundredth birthday party to be was a Sunday Times bestseller and a Pulitzer Prize Award-winning writer Stephanie Johnson lovingly precise. The Mayor will be there. The press will be finalist. peoples a landscape of the past. Mid-century New there. But, as it turns out, Allan will not... Zealand, London and the spa town of Buxton are Escaping (in his slippers) through his bedroom vividly evoked in a novel about motherhood, earliest window, into the flowerbed, Allan makes his getaway. colonial days, pharmacology and poreirewa – the And so begins his picaresque and unlikely journey yearning for absent loved ones. involving criminals, several murders, a suitcase full Stephanie Johnson is the author of several of cash, and incompetent police. As his escapades collections of poetry and of short stories, some plays unfold, Allan’s earlier life is revealed. A life in www.impacdublinaward.ie Eligible Titles 2014 which – remarkably – he played a key role behind The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry The Murder of Halland the scenes in some of the momentous events of the twentieth century. Rachel Joyce Pia Juul Nominated by: Translated from the original Danish by Martin Aitken Jonas Jonasson was born in Sweden in 1962. He has Bibliothèque Municipale Á Vocation Regionale de Nominated by: a professional background as a journalist and media Nice, France Aarhus Kommunes Biblioteker, Denmark consultant. The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Dunedin Public Libraries, New Zealand Copenhagen Central Library, Denmark Out of the Window and Disappeared is his first novel Wojewódzka i Miejska Biblioteka Publiczna, Lódz, which Jonasson describes as ‘an intelligent, very Denmark’s foremost literary author turns crime Poland stupid book’. He is currently working on his second. fiction on its head. The Library of Birmingham, United Kindgom The Illicit Happiness of Other People Hartford Public Library, USA Bess and Halland live in a small town, where Lincoln Library, Springfield, USA everyone knows everyone else. When Halland is found murdered in the main square the police When Harold Fry nips out one morning to post a encounter only riddles. For Bess bereavement marks letter, leaving his wife hoovering upstairs, he has no the start of a journey that leads her to a reassessment idea that he is about to walk from one end of the of first friends, then family. country to the other. If you like crime you won’t be disappointed. The He has no hiking boots or map, let alone a compass, book has all the right ingredients. A murder, a waterproof or mobile phone. gun, an inspector, suspense. But the story strays far All he knows is that he must keep walking. beyond the whodunit norm. In beautifully stark language Pia Juul manages to chart the phases of To save someone else’s life. bereavement. Rachel Joyce moved to writing after a twenty-year Pia Juul, born 1962, claims her place as one of career in theatre and television. Her first novel,The Denmark’s foremost literary authors. She has Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, was shortlisted for published five books of poetry, two short story the Commonwealth Book Prize and longlisted for collections and two novels. The Murder of Halland the Man Booker Prize. Joyce has also written over 20 was published in Danish in 2009 and won original afternoon plays for BBC Radio 4. Denmark’s most important literary prize, Den The Vanishers Danske Banks Litteraturpris. Heidi Julavits The Cannon was Red Hot Nominated by: Manu Joseph Vladimir Kecmanović The Free Library of Philadelphia, USA Translated from the original Serbian by Sofija Skorić Nominated by: India International Centre Library, New Delhi Julia Severn is a student at an elite institute for Nominated by: psychics. Her mentor, afflicted by jealousy, refuses The City Library of Herceg-Novi, Montenegro Seventeen-year-old Unni has done something to pass the torch to her young disciple. Instead, This remarkable and powerful novel tells the story terrible. The only clue to his actions lies in a comic she subjects Julia to the humiliation of reliving of how a brutal civil war impacts on the lives of a strip he has drawn, which has fallen into the hands her mother’s suicide when Julia was an infant. As group of Muslim, Serbian and Croat neighbours of his father Ousep. Ousep begins investigating the Julia gains power, Madame Ackermann launches a living in Sarajevo while the city was under siege and extraordinary life of his son, but as he circles closer desperate psychic attack that leaves Julia the victim suffering daily bombardment in the early 1990s. The and closer to the truth, he unravels a secret that of a crippling ailment. shakes his family to the core. war is seen through the eyes of a pre-teen Serbian Julia retreats to a faceless job in Manhattan. But boy whose parents are killed during the shelling. It is Set in Madras in the 1990s, where every adolescent others have noted Julia’s emerging gifts, and soon a gripping tale of cruelty, violence and survival, but male is preparing for the toughest exam in the world, she’s recruited to track down an elusive missing also reveals an underlying expression of faith in the this is a powerful and darkly comic story involving person—a controversial artist who might have a inherent ability of human beings to rise above ethnic an alcoholic’s probe into the minds of the sober, an connection to her mother. As Julia sifts through and religious hatreds. Few books can match the adolescent cartoonist’s dangerous interpretation ghosts and astral clues, everything she thought she author’s skill in depicting how ordinary people react of absolute truth, an inner circle of talented knew of her mother is called into question, and when forced to take sides in a conflict which turns schizophrenics and the pure love of a 12-year-old she discovers that her ability to know the minds of their neighbours into enemies. boy for a beautiful girl. others—including her own—goes far deeper than Vladimir Kecmanović first attracted the public’s she ever imagined. Manu Joseph is a columnist with the International attention in 1990, when he received the Ivo Andric Herald Tribune, the global edition of the New York A founding editor of The Believer magazine, the Award, given by the leading Sarajeve newspaper Times. His first darkly comic novel, Serious Men, recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and winner Oslobodjenje. His stories have appeared in major won the Hindu Best Fiction Award 2010 and was of the PEN New England Award for Literary Belgrade periodicals, and his published novels one of Huffington Post’s 10 best books of 2010. Excellence in Fiction, Heidi Julavits is also the include Poslednja. author of three critically acclaimed novels: The Uses of Enchantment, The Effect of Living Backwards, and The Mineral Palace. www.impacdublinaward.ie Eligible Titles 2014

The Daughters of Mars devoted readership at home and abroad. She received Lost Voices the 2011 Dayton Literary Peace Prize for the body Tom Keneally of her work, and in 2010 won Britain’s Orange Prize Christopher Koch Nominated by: for The Lacuna. She now lives with her family on a Nominated by: The State Library of Queensland, Brisbane, farm in southern Appalachia. The State Library of South Australia, Adelaide Australia The National Library of Australia, Canberra A Death in the Family: My Struggle Book 1 Naomi and Sally Durance are daughters of a dairy Young Hugh Dixon believes he can save his father farmer from the Macleay Valley. Bound together in from ruin if he asks his estranged great-uncle Walter complicity by what they consider a crime, when the – a wealthy lawyer who lives alone in a Tasmanian Great War begins in 1914 they hope to submerge farmhouse passed down through the family – for their guilt by leaving for Europe to nurse the tides of help. As he is drawn into Walter’s rarefied world, young wounded. Hugh discovers that both his uncle and the farmhouse are links to a notorious episode in the Naomi encounters the wonderful, eccentric Lady mid nineteenth century. Tarlton, who is founding a voluntary hospital near Boulogne; Sally serves in a casualty clearing station Walter’s father, Martin, was living in the house when close to the front. They meet the men with whom it was raided by members of an outlaw community they would wish to spend the rest of their lives. run by Lucas Wilson, a charismatic ex-soldier attempting to build a utopia. But like later societies Inspired by the journals of Australian nurses who with communitarian ideals, Nowhere Valley was gave their all to the Great War effort and the men controlled by the gun, with Wilson as benevolent they nursed. The Daughters of Mars is vast in scope yet dictator. extraordinarily intimate. As Walter encourages Hugh’s ambition to become Tom Keneally won the Booker Prize in 1982 with an artist, and again comes to his aid when one of Schindler’s Ark, later made into the Academy Award- Hugh’s friends is charged with murder, the way life’s winning film Schindler’s List by Steven Spielberg. His patterns repeat themselves from one generation to novels The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith, Gossip from another becomes eerily apparent. the Forest, and Confederates were all shortlisted for the Booker Prize, while Bring Larks and Heroes and Karl Ove Knausgard Dramatic, insightful and evocative, Lost Voices is an Three Cheers for The Paraclete won the Miles Franklin Translated from the original Norwegian by Don Bartlett intriguing double narrative that confirms Koch as Award. Nominated by: one of our most significant and compelling novelists. Oslo Public Libraries, Norway Flight Behavior Christopher Koch was born and educated in Stavanger Bibliotek, Norway Tasmania. Koch twice won the Miles Franklin Barbara Kingsolver A searingly honest, addictive and controversial Award for fiction: for The Doubleman and Highways Nominated by: read from the international bestseller, Karl Ove to a War. In 1995 he was made an Officer of the Katona József Library of Bács-Kiskun County, Knausgaard. Order of Australia for his contribution to Australian Kecskemét, Hungary literature. Christopher Koch passed away on Kansas City Public Library, USA Karl Ove Knausgaard writes with exhilarating September 22nd 2013 honesty about his childhood and teenage years, his Flight Behavior takes on one of the most contentious infatuation with rock music, his relationship with The Dinner subjects of our time: climate change. his loving yet almost invisible mother and his distant Herman Koch and unpredictable father, and his bewilderment and Dellarobia Turnbow gave up her own plans when Translated from the original Dutch by Sam Garrett she became pregnant at seventeen. Now, after a grief on his father’s death. When Karl Ove becomes Nominated by: decade of domestic disharmony on a failing farm, a father himself, he must balance the demands of Galway County Library, Ireland she seeks momentary escape through an obsessive caring for a young family with his determination to Zentralbibliothek Zürich, Switzerland flirtation with a younger man. As she hikes up a write great literature. Openbare Bibliotheek Amsterdam, The Netherlands mountain road behind her house to a secret tryst, she A Death in the Family is the first of the six books in Openbare Bibliotheek Eindhoven, The Netherlands encounters a shocking sight: a silent, forested valley the My Struggle cycle. In it Knausgaard has created Stichting Bibliotheek Rotterdam, The Netherlands filled with what looks like a lake of fire. a universal story which is gripping, hugely readable The Libraries of The Hague / Public Libraries The bewildering emergency draws rural farmers into and written as if the author’s very life were at stake. of The Hague, The Netherlands unexpected acquaintance with urbane journalists, Karl Ove Knausgaard was born in Norway in 1968 Bibliotheek Utrecht, The Netherlands opportunists, sightseers, and a striking biologist with and made his debut with the novel Out of This World. A summer’s evening in Amsterdam and two couples his own stake in the outcome. As the community A Time for Everything is his second novel and was meet at a fashionable restaurant. Between mouthfuls lines up to judge the woman and her miracle, nominated for the Nordic Council Prize. It was his of food and over the delicate scraping of cutlery, the Dellarobia confronts her family, her church, her first to be translated into English. The first volume of conversation remains a gentle hum of politeness – town, and a larger world, in a flight toward truth that his Min Kamp (My Struggle) was named a finalist for the banality of work, the triviality of holidays. But could undo all she has ever believed. Norway’s 2009 Brage Prize. the empty words hide a terrible conflict and, with Barbara Kingsolver’s work has been translated every forced smile and every new course, the knives into more than twenty languages and has earned a are being sharpened... www.impacdublinaward.ie Eligible Titles 2014

Each couple has a fifteen-year-old son. Together, Sea Hearts / The Brides of Rollrock Island and that both can lead to moral dilemmas. How the boys have committed a horrifying act, caught grave is sexual betrayal? Who is behind the bale of on camera, and their grainy images have been Margo Lanagan marijuana that washes up on Anna’s shore, and what beamed into living rooms across the nation; despite Nominated by: should she, an outsider, and Murdock, rooted in this a police manhunt, the boys remain unidentified – by The State Library of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia place and attracted to her, do about it? everyone except their parents. As the dinner reaches On remote Rollrock Island, the sea-witch Misskaella Part erotic love story, part quest for home and heart, its culinary climax, the conversation finally touches discovers she can draw a girl from the heart of a seal. Anna From Away is a superbly crafted tale of love on their children and, as civility and friendship So, for a price, any man might buy himself a bride; after love, a novel rich in atmosphere and infused disintegrate, each couple shows just how far they are an irresistibly enchanting sea-wife. But what cost will with lyrical descriptions of land and sea. prepared to go to protect those they love. be borne by the people of Rollrock – the men, the D.R. MacDonald has received two Pushcart Prizes, Herman Koch, born in 1953, is a Dutch writer. He women, the children – once Misskaella sets her heart an Ingram Merrill Award and an O. Henry Award was a renowned television actor on the series Jiskefet on doing such a thing? for his short fiction. His first novel, Cape Breton and a former columnist for the newspaper Volkskrant. Margo Lanagan weaves an extraordinary tale of Road, received much critical acclaim and became The Dinner is his sixth novel and has already won desire and revenge, of loyalty, heartache and human a national bestseller. D.R. MacDonald teaches at the prestigious Publieksprijs Prize in 2009. Herman weakness, and of the unforeseen consequences of Stanford University in California and spends his Koch lives in Amsterdam. all-consuming love. summers in Boularderie, Nova Scotia. The Headmaster’s Wager Margo Lanagan is an internationally acclaimed People Park writer of novels and short stories, including the award-winning Black Juice, Tender Morsels and Red Pasha Malla Spikes. Margo lives in Sydney. Nominated by: Halifax Public Libraries, Canada Capital It’s the Silver Jubilee of People Park, an urban John Lanchester experiment conceived by a radical mayor and Nominated by: zealously policed by the testosterone-powered New Dunedin Public Libraries, New Zealand Fraternal League of Men. To celebrate, the insular Miami Dade Public Library, USA island city has engaged the illustrationist Raven, who promises to deliver the most astonishing spectacle its The residents of Pepys Road, London – a banker residents have ever seen. As the entire island comes and his shopaholic wife, an elderly woman dying of together for the event, we meet an unforgettable a brain tumour, the Pakistani family who run the cross-section of its inhabitants, from activists to local shop, the young football star from Senegal and nihilists, art stars to athletes, families to inveterate his minder – all receive an anonymous postcard with loners. a simple message: We want what you have. Who is behind it? What do they want? Soon, however, what has promised to be a triumph Vincent Lam of civic harmony begins to reveal its shadow side. As the mystery of the postcards deepens, the world Nominated by: And when Raven’s illustration exceeds even the most around Pepys Road is turned upside down by the Calgary Public Library, Canada extreme of expectations, the island is plunged into financial crash and all of its residents’ lives change New York Public Library, USA a series of unnatural disasters that force people to beyond recognition. confront what they are really made of. Percival Chen is the headmaster of the most John Lanchester has written four novels, The Debt to respected English academy in 1960s Saigon. Fiercely Pasha Malla is an award-winning writer. He was Pleasure, Mr Phillips, Fragrant Harbour, and Capital, proud of his Chinese heritage, he is quick to spot born in St. John’s, Newfoundland and now lives in and two works of non-fiction. His books have won the business opportunities rife in a divided country, Toronto, Ontario. numerous awards and been translated into twenty- though he also harbors a weakness for gambling five languages. He is married, has two children and haunts and the women who frequent them. He Bring Up the Bodies lives in London. devotedly ignores all news of the fighting that swirls Hilary Mantel around him, but when his only son gets in trouble Anna From Away Nominated by: with the Vietnamese authorities, Percival is forced to Toronto Public Library, Canada send him away. D.R. MacDonald Helsinki City Library, Finland Nominated by: In the loneliness that follows, Percival finds solace Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli, Italy Cape Breton Regional Library, Sydney, Canada in Jacqueline, a beautiful woman of mixed French Christchurch City Libraries, New Zealand and Vietnamese heritage. But Percival’s new-found When Anna Starling flees a dissolving marriage in Universitätsbibliothek Bern, Switzerland happiness is precarious, and as the complexities California to save herself and her artistic career in The Library of Birmingham, United Kingdom of war encroach further into his world, he must Cape Breton, her life intersects with that of Red Liverpool City Libraries, United Kindgom confront the tragedy of all he has refused to see. Murdock, a cabinetmaker who has recently lost the Laramie County Library System, Cheyenne, USA great love of his life. Surrounded by old ghosts and Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, USA Vincent Lam is from the expatriate Chinese echoes of those who once lived in this isolated, now community of Vietnam. His first book, Bloodletting Continuing what began in the Man Booker Prize- depleted community, Anna and Murdock discover & Miraculous Cures, won the 2006 Scotiabank Giller winning Wolf Hall, we return to the court of Henry that the present is inextricably linked with the past, Prize. He and his family live in Toronto. VIII, to witness the irresistible rise of Thomas www.impacdublinaward.ie Eligible Titles 2014

Cromwell as he contrives the destruction of Anne Hattie gives birth to nine more children whom she In this ambitious, suspenseful and achingly human Boleyn. raises with grit and mettle and not an ounce of the novel, set against the decline of the nuclear family tenderness they crave. She vows to prepare them for and the unstoppable rise of digital relationships, In By 1535 Cromwell is Chief Minister to Henry, his the calamitous difficulty they are sure to face in their the Absence of Heroes gives us the complex modern fortunes having risen with those of Anne Boleyn. later lives, to meet a world that will not love them, a world, full of hard, binary choices: make one or two But the split from the Catholic Church has left world that will not be kind. Captured here in twelve bad choices in a row and just see what happens... England dangerously isolated, and Anne has failed luminous narrative threads, their lives tell the story to give the king an heir. Cromwell watches as Henry Anthony McCarten has published five novels to of a mother’s monumental courage and the journey falls for plain Jane Seymour. Negotiating the politics date and also written numerous stage plays. His of a nation. of the court, Cromwell must find a solution that novels have been translated into 14 languages. will satisfy Henry, safeguard the nation and secure Ayana Mathis is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Death Of A Superhero won the 2008 Austrian Youth his own career. But neither minister nor king will Workshop and is a recipient of the Michener- Literature Prize and was a finalist for the German emerge unscathed from the bloody theatre of Anne’s Copernicus Fellowship. The Twelve Tribes of Hattie is Youth Literature Prize. final days. her first novel. Originally from Philadelphia, she now lives in Brooklyn. Sweet Tooth Hilary Mantel is the author of thirteen books, including A Place of Greater Safety, Beyond Black and The German Lottery the memoir Giving Up the Ghost. Her two most recent novels, Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, have Miha Mazzini both been awarded the Man Booker Prize. Translated from the original Slovenian by Urška Zupanec A Blessed Snarl Nominated by: Samuel Thomas Martin Knjižnica Oton Župancic, Ljubljana, Slovenia Nominated by: A young postman in 1950s Yugoslavia delivers a Newfoundland & Labrador Public Libraries, registered letter to a woman who is hanging out her St. John’s, Canada washing... Soon he is involved in a lottery scheme devised by the woman’s husband, who has been Patrick Wiseman moved his wife and son back to spending some time in prison – a scheme, he is Newfoundland to start a new Pentecostal church, persuaded, that will bring wealth and happiness to but when his wife Anne leaves him for a man she the town’s poorest and most deserving citizens. meets on Facebook and his son Hab moves in with his girlfriend Natalie—a burgeoning alcoholic with a How did he get it so wrong? As the narrator fiery past—Patrick takes a suicidal leap of faith that recalls for his grandchildren his coming-of-age, brings him face to face with his estranged father Des, Miha Mazzini constructs a political fable that is a Catholic mystic who might be covering up an old also a satire on youthful idealism, greed, and the Ian McEwan crime. coincidence between our beliefs and what we want to believe. Nominated by: While Patrick wrestles to come to terms with his Stedelijke Openbare Bibliotheek Gent, Belgium failed marriage, Hab struggles to hang on to his The Slovenian writer and film-maker Miha Mazzini, Lisbon Central Library, Portugal tenuous relationship with Natalie. But when a born in 1961, is the author of twenty-three books. Biblioteques de Barcelona, Spain woman is almost burned alive in a nearby house The Cartier Project was ex-Yugoslavia’s all-time fire and a neighborhood drunk is beaten within an bestselling novel and was made into a feature film. Serena Frome, the beautiful daughter of an Anglican inch of life, Hab begins to wonder if Natalie and her Guarding Hanna was longlisted for the International bishop, has a brief affair with an older man during housemate Gerry know more than they let on. IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2004. In 2011 her final year at Cambridge, and finds herself being the first of his stories to be published in the US won groomed for the intelligence services. The year is Samuel Thomas Martin is the author of This a Pushcart Prize. 1972. Britain, confronting economic disaster, is being Ramshackle Tabernacle which was shortlisted for the torn apart by industrial unrest and terrorism and 2010 BMO Winterset Award and longlisted for In the Absence of Heroes faces its fifth state of emergency. The Cold War has the 2011 ReLit Award for Short Fiction. Originally entered a moribund phase, but the fight goes on. from Ontario he now lives in Newfoundland with Anthony McCarten his wife Samantha and their dog Vadet. Nominated by: Serena, a compulsive reader of novels, is sent on a Stadt Bibliothek Salzburg, Austria ‘secret mission’ which brings her into the literary The Twelve Tribes of Hattie world of Tom Haley, a promising young writer. First Jim and Renata Delpe’s life is in a very modern she loves his stories, then she begins to love the Ayana Mathis crisis. With their son, Jeff, sending text messages man. Can she maintain the fiction of her undercover Nominated by: to his dead brother while slipping quickly into life? And who is inventing whom? To answer these Pikes Peak Library District, Colorado Springs, USA internet addiction, and with Renata engaged in a questions, Serena must abandon the first rule of secret internet relationship with a figure she has In 1923, fifteen-year-old Hattie Shepherd flees espionage – trust no one. never actually met, Jim Delpe – who has long had ‘a Georgia and settles in Philadelphia, hoping for a love-hate relationship’ with computers – is left with Ian McEwan is a critically acclaimed author of chance at a better life. Instead, she marries a man no choice but to log in himself, if the family is to be short stories and novels for adults, as well as The who will bring her nothing but disappointment and saved. Daydreamer, a children’s novel illustrated by Anthony watches helplessly as her firstborn twins succumb Browne. His novels include The Child in Time, The to an illness a few pennies could have prevented. www.impacdublinaward.ie Eligible Titles 2014

Cement Garden, Enduring Love, Amsterdam, which Home Island of a Thousand Mirrors won the 1998 Booker Prize, Atonement, Saturday, On Chesil Beach and Solar. Toni Morrison Nayomi Munaweera Nominated by: Nominated by: Railsea Helsinki City Library, Finland Colombo Public Library, Sri Lanka Veria Central Public Library, Greece China Mieville A few months after the 1983 riots, a Sinhalese family Nominated by: When Frank Money joined the army to escape his leaves Sri Lanka for America. The two children, Bibliothèque Municipale de Mulhouse, France too-small world, he left behind his cherished and Yasodhara and Lanka, adapt to their new life quickly, fragile little sister, Cee. After the war, his shattered but memories of their childhood on a tropical island On board the moletrain Medes, Sham Yes ap Soorap life has no purpose until he hears that Cee is in in the middle of the Indian Ocean are seared into watches in awe as he witnesses his first moldywarpe danger. their soul. Meanwhile, Saraswathi lives in the middle hunt: the giant mole bursting from the earth, the of the war-torn country struggling to be a teenager harpoonists targeting their prey, the battle resulting Frank is a modern Odysseus returning to a 1950s in a land that is anything but normal. in one’s death and the other’s glory. Spectacular as America mined with lethal pitfalls for an unwary it is, Sham can’t shake the sense that there is more black man. As he journeys to his native Georgia in This is a beguiling tale of three women swept up in to life than the endless rails of the railsea – even if search of Cee, it becomes clear that their troubles the turbulence of an island’s history and whose fate his captain thinks only of hunting the ivory-colored began well before their wartime separation. Together, is woven intricately together in war, migration, love, mole that took her arm years ago. But when they they return to their rural hometown of Lotus, where exile and belonging. Covering three quarters of a come across a wrecked train, Sham finds something buried secrets are unearthed and where Frank learns century of Sri Lanka’s past, this beautifully written – a series of pictures hinting at something, at last what it means to be a man, what it takes to novel combines harsh reality, love and tenderness somewhere, that should be impossible – that leads to heal, and – above all – what it means to come home. with astonishing insight. considerably more than he’d bargained for. Soon he’s Toni Morrison is the author of ten novels, from Nayomi Munaweera was born in Sri Lanka and hunted on all sides, by pirates, trainsfolk, monsters The Bluest Eye (1970) to A Mercy (2008). She has grew up in Nigeria. She emigrated to the United and salvage-scrabblers, and it might not be just received the National Book Critics Circle Award States in her early teens. She lives in Oakland, Sham’s life that’s about to change. It could be the and the Pulitzer Prize. In 1993 she was awarded the California. Island of a Thousand Mirrors is her first whole of the railsea. Nobel Prize in Literature. She lives in New York. novel. China Miéville is the award-winning author of the novels King Rat, Perdido Street Station, The Scar, Iron The Hunger Angel Three Strong Women Council, Looking for Jake, a collection of short stories; Herta Müller Marie NDiaye and Un Lun Dun, his New York Times bestselling Translated from the original German by Philip Boehm Translated from the original French by John Fletcher book for younger readers. He lives and works in Nominated by: Nominated by: London. Galway County Library, Ireland Gradska Knjiznica Rijeka, Croatia Zentral – u. Landesbibliothek Berlin, Germany Heft It was an icy morning in January 1945 when the Universitäts-und Landesbibliothek Bonn, Germany Liz Moore patrol came for seventeen-year-old Leo Auberg, to deport him to a camp in the Soviet Union. Leo Forty-year-old Norah leaves Paris, her family and her Nominated by: would spend the next five years in a coke processing career as a lawyer to visit her father in Dakar. It is an Waterford City Libraries, Ireland plant, shoveling coal, lugging bricks, mixing mortar, uncomfortable reunion – she is asked to use her skills Arthur Opp weighs 550 pounds and hasn’t left and battling the relentless calculus of hunger that as a lawyer to get her brother out of prison – and his rambling Brooklyn home in a decade. Twenty governed the labor colony: one shovel load of coal is ultimately the trip endangers her marriage and her miles away, in Yonkers, seventeen-year-old Kel worth one gram of bread. relationship with her own daughter, and drives her to Keller navigates life as the poor kid in a rich school the very edge of madness. Herta Müller calls upon her unique combination and pins his hopes on what seems like a promising of poetic intensity and dispassionate precision to Fanta, on the other hand, leaves Dakar to follow her baseball career – if he can untangle himself from his conjure the distorted world of the labor camp in husband Rudy to rural France. And it is through difficult family life. The link between this unlikely all its physical and moral absurdity; distilling Leo’s Rudy’s bitter and guilt-ridden perspective that we see pair is Kel’s mother, Charlene, a former student of struggle into words of breathtaking intensity that Fanta stagnate with boredom in this alien, narrow Arthur’s. After nearly two decades of silence, it is take us on a journey far beyond the Gulag and into environment. Charlene’s unexpected phone call to Arthur – a plea the depths of one man’s soul. for help – that shatters their isolation. Told with Khady is forced into exile from Senegal because of warmth and intelligence through Arthur and Kel’s Herta Müller is the winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize poverty, because her husband is dead, because she is own quirky and lovable voices, Heft is the story of in Literature, as well as the International IMPAC lonely and in despair. With other illegal immigrants, two improbable heroes whose connection transforms Dublin Literary Award 1998 and the European she embarks on a journey which takes her nowhere, both their lives. Literature Prize. She is the author of, among other but from which she will never return. books, The Land of Green Plums and The Appointment. Liz Moore is a writer and musician. Her debut Marie NDiaye published her first novel at seventeen, novel, The Words of Every Song, was published and has won the Prix Femina for Rosie Carpe in 2001 in 2007, and she recently released her album and the Prix Goncourt for Three Strong Women in ‘Backyards’. She is a professor at Holy Family 2009. Her play Papa Doit Manger has been taken University in Philadelphia, where she lives. into the repertoire of the Comédie Française. Since 2007 she has lived in Berlin with her family.

www.impacdublinaward.ie Eligible Titles 2014

Phantom Neuman explores the idea that all love is an act of Take a leap and come along for the ride translation, and that all translation is an act of love. Jo Nesbø Ralf W. Oliver wrote Flying Leap after the story Translated from the original Norwegian by Don Bartlett Andrés Neuman was born in Buenos Aires and appeared to him on a flight to LA. He lives in the now lives in Granada, Spain. He was selected one of Twin Cities with his wife. Nominated by: Granta’s Best Young Spanish-Language Novelists, Mestska Knihovna v Praze, Czech Republic and included in Hay’s Bogotá 39 list. He has The Light of Amsterdam Harry Hole is back in Oslo. He’s been away for some published numerous novels, short stories, essays and David Park time, but his ghosts have a way of catching up with poetry collections. Traveller of the Century won the Nominated by: him. The case that brings him back is already closed. 2009 Alfaguara Prize and the National Critics Prize. Tampere City Library, Finland There is no room for doubt: the young junkie was shot dead by a fellow addict. Mudwoman It is December in Belfast, Christmas is approaching and three sets of people are about to make their way The police don’t want him back... Joyce Carol Oates to Amsterdam. Alan, a university art teacher, goes on Nominated by: Denied permission to reopen the investigation, a pilgrimage to the city of his youth with troubled Biblioteques de Barcelona, Spain Harry strikes out on his own. Beneath the city’s teenage son Jack; middle-aged couple Marion and eerie tranquillity, he discovers a trail of violence and Mudgirl is a child abandoned by her mother in the Richard take a break from running their garden mysterious disappearances seemingly unnoticed silty flats of the Black Snake River. She survives, and centre to celebrate Marion’s birthday; and Karen, a by the police. At every turn Harry is faced with a in the care of a well-meaning Quaker couple grows single mother struggling to make ends meet, joins conspiracy of silence. to forget her painful beginnings. But the past is not her daughter’s hen party. As these people brush so easy to suppress. against each other in the squares, museums and The criminals don’t want him back... parks of Amsterdam, their lives are transfigured as Meredith ‘M.R.’ Neukirchen is the first woman Harry is not the only one who is interested in the they encounter the complexities of love in a city that president of a prestigious Ivy League university. She case. From the moment he steps off the plane, challenges what has gone before. too faces problems: challenges to her leadership someone is watching his every move and tracing his which test her integrity in unexpected ways. And David Park has written seven books including every call. then a reckless trip upstate thrusts M.R. Neukirchen Swallowing the Sun, The Big Snow and The Truth Jo Nesbø played football for Norway’s premier into an unexpected collision with the ghostly Commissioner. He was the winner of the Authors’ league team Modle, but his dream of playing Mudgirl and the life M.R. belives she has left Club First Novel Award, the Bass Ireland Arts professionally for Spurs was dashed when he tore behind. Award for Literature and three-times winner of the crucial ligaments in his knee. He is regarded as one University of Ulster’s McCrea Literary Award. He As M.R. finds herself in thrall to a force beyond her of Europe’s leading crime writers, with both The has twice been shortlisted for the Irish Novel of the understanding, all she knows is that she must resist Leopard and Phantom topping the UK bestseller Year. He lives in County Down, Northern Ireland or else sink back into the mire of her own past. charts. His novels are published in 40 countries. with his wife and two children. Joyce Carol Oates is a novelist, critic, playwright, Traveller of the Century poet and author of short stories and one of America’s The Forrests Andrés Neuman most highly respected literary figures. She is the Translated from the original Spanish by Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of Nick Caistor and Lorenza Garcia Humanities at Princeton University.

Nominated by: Flying Leap Galway County Library, Ireland Biblioteca Daniel Cosío Villegas El Colegio de Ralf W. Oliver Mexico, Mexico City Nominated by: Regional Library of Karviná, Karviná-Mizerov, A traveller stops off for the night in the mysterious Czech Republic city of Wandernburg. He intends to leave the following day, but the city begins to ensnare him Sometimes you never know. with its strange, shifting geography. A man stands on a rooftop in midtown Manhattan, When Hans befriends an old organ grinder, and ready to jump. Instead, he ends up in a conversation falls in love with Sophie, the daughter of a local beyond anything he could have imagined. merchant, he finds it impossible to leave. It’s consciousness or bust. Through a series of memorable encounters with Flying Leap is a book about many things. The starkly different characters, Neuman takes the main character embarks on a journey of discovery reader on a hypothetical journey back into post- through an unusual circumstance, a conversation Emily Perkins Napoleonic Europe, subtly evoking its parallels with that questions everything and every thing. Through our modern era. At the heart of the novel lies the Nominated by: this process the protagonist and the reader find love story between Sophie and Hans. They are both Auckland Libraries, New Zealand themselves looking at life anew. In the tradition of translators, and between dictionaries and bed, bed Christchurch City Libraries, New Zealand Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael or Richard Bach’s Illusions, and dictionaries, they gradually build up their own Timaru District Libraries, New Zealand Flying Leap offers a fresh perspective on the meaning fragile common language. Through their relationship, Wellington City Libraries, New Zealand of truth. www.impacdublinaward.ie Eligible Titles 2014

Dorothy Forrest is immersed in the sensory world Samuel, two amiable pre-teens. The evening news The Yellow Birds around her; she lives in the flickering moment. From is on in the living room but nobody pays it any the age of seven, when her odd, disenfranchised attention until Dr. Pontecorvo’s name surfaces from Kevin Powers family moves from New York City to the wide skies the background noise. Nominated by: of Auckland, to the very end of her life, this is her Halifax Public Library, Canada Leo Pontecorvo has been publicly accused of a vile great gift and possible misfortune. Bergen Offentlige Bibliotek, Norway crime. Every detail of his private and professional Laramie County Library System, Cheyenne, USA Through the wilderness of a commune, to falling life is about to come under scrutiny, to be debated Chicago Public Library, USA in love, to early marriage and motherhood, from by both friends and foes, by ravenous reporters and Pikes Peak Library District, Colorado Springs, USA the glorious anguish of parenting to the loss of punctilious prosecutors. But Leo could bear all this everything worked for and the unexpected return if it weren’t for the suspicious gazes of his wife and An unforgettable depiction of the psychological of love, Dorothy is swept along by time. Her family children. Surely they, of all people, believe in his impact of war, by a young Iraq veteran and poet, looms and recedes; revelations come to light; death innocence! The Yellow Birds is already being hailed as a modern changes everything, but somehow life remains as classic. Alessandro Piperno was born in Rome. His 2005 potent as it ever was, and the joy in just being won’t novel, The Worst Intentions, won the Campiello Prize Everywhere John looks, he sees Murph. He flinches let her go. for First Novel and became an instant bestseller in when cars drive past. His fingers clasp around Emily Perkins was born in 1970. She is the author Italy. Piperno is the author of two works of non- the rifle he hasn’t held for months. Wide-eyed of Not Her Real Name, a collection of short stories fiction.Persecution , the first installment of a diptych strangers praise him as a hero, but he can feel himself which won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize and entitled The Friendly Fire of Memories, is his long- disappearing. was shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, awaited second novel. Back home after a year in Iraq, memories swarm and the novels Leave Before You Go, The New Girl, around him: bodies burning in the crisp morning air. Novel About My Wife, winner of the Believer Award Freeman Sunlight falling through branches; bullets kicking up and, most recently, the hugely acclaimed The Forrests. Leonard Pitts Jr. dust; ripples on a pond wavering like plucked strings. Emily Perkins lives in New Zealand. Nominated by: The promise he made, to a young man’s mother, that Em and the Big Hoom Detroit Public Library, USA her son would be brought home safely. Jerry Pinto Freeman takes place in the first few months Kevin Powers was born and raised in Richmond, following the Confederate surrender and the Virginia. He served in the US Army in 2004 and Nominated by: assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Upon learning 2005 in Iraq, where he was deployed as a machine India International Centre Library, New Delhi of Lee’s surrender, Sam—a runaway slave who once gunner in Mosul and Tal Afar. His debut novel, The In a one-bedroom-hall-kitchen in Mahim, Bombay, worked for the Union Army—decides to leave his Yellow Birds won the Guardian First Book Award Imelda Mendes – Em to her children – holds her safe haven in Philadelphia and set out on foot to 2012 and was a New York Times bestseller in its first family in thrall with her flamboyance, her compelling return to the war-torn South. What compels him week of publication. imagination, her unspoken love, her sometimes cruel on this almost-suicidal course is the desire to find candour. Through this, her husband, to whom she his wife, the mother of his only child, whom he True was once “buttercup”, her son and daughter learn to and their son left behind 15 years earlier on the Riikka Pulkkinen cope with her mania and her frequent wish to die. Mississippi farm to which they all “belonged.” Translated from the original Finnish by Lola M. Rogers A seering, and at times darkly funny study of mental At the same time, Sam’s wife, Tilda, is being Nominated by: illness, Jerry Pinto’s first novel is also a deeply forced to walk at gunpoint with her owner and The National Library of Estonia, Tallinn moving story about love and family relationships. two of his other slaves from the charred remains Elsa, a well-known child psychologist, is dying of of his Mississippi farm into Arkansas, in search Jerry Pinto’s published work includes the book of cancer and has arranged to be at home during her of an undefined place that would still respect his poems Asylum, and Helen: The Life and Times of an last months. Her granddaughter Anna is caring for entitlements as slaveowner and Confederate officer. H-Bomb, which won the National Award for the Elsa and one day discovers a mysterious old dress in Best Book on Cinema, 2007. He has also edited an Freeman illuminates the times and places it describes a closet. It belonged to a young woman, Eeva, who anthology of writings on Goa, Reflected in Water, from a fresh perspective, capturing the pathos had worked for the family as a nanny decades before and co-edited a similar anthology on his native city, and possibility of the era particularly as it reflects but whom they hadn’t spoken about in many years. Bombay, Meri Jaan. the ordeal of the black slaves grappling with the Anna slowly pieces together Eeva’s story, including promise—and the terror—of their new status as free her long affair with Anna’s grandfather, and a family Persecution men and women. cover-up comes to light. In imagining Eeva’s life, Anna begins to understand the tragedies of her own. Alessandro Piperno Leonard Pitts, Jr. is a Pulitzer Prize-winning Translated from the original Italian by Ann Goldstein columnist for the Miami Herald. He is the author of True is a psychological drama that explores the Nominated by: the novel Before I Forget, the memoir Becoming Dad, nature of truth, lies, memory, and how stories have Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale Firenze, and Forward From This Moment: Selected Columns, the ability to bend and change with time. Florence, Italy 1994-2009. He lives in Maryland. Riikka Pulkkinen studied literature and philosophy In a sprawling villa on the outskirts of Rome, the at the University of Helsinki. She has received the members of the Pontecorvo family have gathered for Kaarle Prize and the Laila Hirvisaari Prize. True is dinner. Leo Pontecorvo, an internationally revered her English-language debut. pediatric oncologist, is forty-eight. His wife, Rachel, is a physician and the loving mother to Filippo and www.impacdublinaward.ie Eligible Titles 2014

Standing in Another Man’s Grave Above All Things The Lifeboat Ian Rankin Tanis Rideout Charlotte Rogan Nominated by: Nominated by: Nominated by: Cape Breton Regional Library, Sydney, Canada Saint John Free Public Library, New Brunswick, Stedelijke Openbare Bibliotheek Gent, Belgium Canada It’s twenty-five years since John Rebus appeared on In the summer of 1914, the ‘Empress Alexandra’ the scene, and five years since he retired. Not only Above All Things tells the story of George Mallory’s suffers a mysterious explosion on its voyage from is Rebus as stubborn and anarchic as ever, but he legendary attempt to be the first man to conquer London to New York City. On board are Henry finds himself in trouble with Rankin’s latest creation, Mount Everest – and of the remarkable woman he Winter, a rich banker, and his young new wife, Malcolm Fox of Edinburgh’s internal affairs unit. left behind to await news of his fate. Grace. Somehow, Henry manages to secure a place Added to which, Rebus may be about to derail the in a lifeboat for Grace. As the castaways battle the A captivating blend of historical fact and imaginative career of his ex-colleague Siobhan Clarke, while elements, and each other, Grace watches and waits. fiction, Above All Things moves seamlessly between himself being permanently derailed by mob boss and Her journey to a life of glittering privilege has been the epic story of Mallory’s final expedition and a old adversary Big Ger Cafferty. But all Rebus wants far from straightforward. Now, she knows her very moving account of a day in the life of his wife, Ruth. to do is discover the truth about a series of seemingly survival is at stake. Over the course of three perilous Through George’s perspective, and that of the newest unconnected disappearances stretching back to the weeks, the passengers on the lifeboat plot, scheme, member of the climbing team, Sandy Irvine, we get millennium. The problem being, no one else wants to gossip and console one another while sitting inches an astonishing picture of the terrible risks taken by go there – and that includes Rebus’s fellow officers. apart. Their deepest beliefs about goodness, humanity the men on the treacherous terrain of the Himalayas. Not that any of that is going to stop Rebus. and God are tested to the limit as they begin to But it is through Ruth’s eyes that a complex portrait discover what they will do in order to survive. Ian Rankin graduated from the University of of a marriage emerges, one forged on the eve of Edinburgh in 1982. His first Rebus novel was the First World War, shadowed by its losses, and Charlotte Rogan graduated from Princeton in published in 1987, and the Rebus books are now haunted by the ever-present possibility that George 1975. She taught herself to write between working translated into thirty-six languages and are bestsellers might not come home. at various jobs and bringing up triplets. Her worldwide. Rankin received the OBE for services to childhood vacations with a family of sailors provided Tanis Rideout received her MFA from the literature, opting to receive the prize in his home city inspiration for The Lifeboat, her first novel. She lives University of Guelph-Humber, and she has been of Edinburgh, where he lives with his partner and in Connecticut, US. a finalist for the Bronwen Wallace Award for two sons. Emerging Writers and the CBC Literary Awards. The Casual Vacancy The Cove In 2006, she was named the Poet Laureate for Lake Ontario. She was born in Belgium, grew up in J.K. Rowling Ron Rash Bermuda and in Kingston, Ontario, and now lives in Nominated by: Nominated by: Toronto. Mestska Knihovna v Praze, Czech Republic Richmond Public Library, USA Ignorance When Barry Fairbrother dies in his early forties, the Deep in the rugged Appalachians of North Carolina town of Pagford is left in shock. lies the cove, a dark, forbidding place where spirits Michèle Roberts Pagford is, seemingly, an English idyll, with a and fetches wander. Or so the townsfolk of Mars Nominated by: cobbled market square and an ancient abbey, but Hill believe–just as they know that Laurel Shelton, Margarita Rudomino All-Russia State Library for what lies behind the pretty façade is a town at war. the lonely young woman who lives within its Foreign Literature, Moscow, Russia Rich at war with poor, teenagers at war with their shadows, is a witch. Jeanne and Marie-Angèle grow up, side by side yet parents, wives at war with their husbands, teachers When a mute stranger appears, carrying nothing but apart, in the Catholic village of Sainte Madeleine. at war with their pupils… Pagford is not what it first a beautiful silver flute and a note explaining that his Marie-Angèle is the daughter of the grocer, inflated seems. name is Walter, Laurel nurses him back to health. As with ideas of her rightful place in society; Jeanne’s The empty seat left by Barry on the parish council the days pass, Walter slips easily into life in the cove mother washes clothes for a living and used to be a soon becomes the catalyst for the biggest war the and into Laurel’s heart. Jew. When war arrives, the village must play its part town has yet seen. Who will triumph in an election in a game for which no one knows the rules – not But Walter harbors a secret that could destroy fraught with passion, duplicity and unexpected the dubious hero who embroils Marie-Angele in everything–and danger is closer than they know. revelations? the black market, nor the artist living alone with his Though the war in Europe is near its end, patriotic red canvases. In these uncertain times, the enemy TheCasual Vacancy is a big novel about a small town. fervor flourishes. In a time of uncertainty, when fear may be hiding in your garden shed and the truth and ignorance reign, Laurel and Walter will discover J.K. Rowling is the author of the bestselling Harry can be buried under a pyramid of recriminations. A that love may not be enough to protect them. Potter series of seven books, which have sold over mesmerising exploration of guilt, faith, desire and 450 million copies worldwide, are distributed Ron Rash is the author of three prize-winning judgement, Ignorance brings to life a people at war. in more than 200 territories, translated into novels: One Foot in Eden, Saints at the River, and The Michèle Roberts is the author of twelve highly 73 languages, and have been turned into eight World Made Straight; three collections of poems; and acclaimed novels, including The Looking Glass and blockbuster films. The Casual Vacancy is her first novel two collections of stories. He holds the John Parris Daughters of the House, which was shortlisted for for adults. J.K. Rowling lives in Edinburgh with her Chair in Appalachian Studies at Western Carolina the Booker Prize. Half-English and half-French, husband and three children. University. Michèle Roberts lives in London and in the Mayenne, France. She is Emeritus Professor of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. www.impacdublinaward.ie Eligible Titles 2014

The Watch consequences of greed affect an entire community, C. J. Sansom was educated at Birmingham a drama of kidnap and murder unfolds. Through a University, where he took a BA and then a PhD Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya chorus of unique voices, each struggling with their in history. After working in a variety of jobs, he Nominated by: own version of truth, a single authentic tale emerges. retrained as a solicitor and practised in Sussex, Cleveland Public Library, USA until becoming a full-time writer. Sansom is the This exhilarating debut captures the language and bestselling author of the acclaimed Shardlake series, Following a desperate night-long battle, a group of spirit of rural Ireland. Taking on the mantle of Synge and the Spanish Civil War thriller Winter in Madrid. beleaguered soldiers in an isolated base in Kandahar and O’Casey, the author expresses the torment and He lives in Sussex. are faced with a lone woman demanding the return tenderness of a generation. Witty, dark and poignant, of her brother’s body. Is she a spy, a black widow, a The Spinning Heart speaks for contemporary Ireland Light Falling on Bamboo lunatic? Or is she what she claims to be: a grieving like no other novel. young sister intent on burying her brother according Lawrence Scott Donal Ryan was born in a village in North to local rites? Single-minded in her mission, she Nominated by: Tipperary and lives just outside Limerick city with refuses to move from her spot on the field in full The National Library Service, Bridgetown, his wife and two young children. The Spinning Heart view of every soldier in the stark outpost. Her Barbados has been lauded by critics ever since it’s release and presence quickly proves dangerous as the camp’s was the Board Gais Energy Book of the Year 2012. Trinidad, 1865. Michel Jean Cazabon returns home tense, claustrophobic atmosphere comes to a boil to be at his beloved mother’s deathbed. Life on the when the men begin arguing about what to do next. The Brothers island seems very different after the freedoms of Told from various points of view, including those Asko Sahlberg post-Revolutionary Paris, where his paintings have of the U.S. soldiers, Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya’s Translated from the original Finnish by hung in the Louvre. heartbreaking and haunting novel takes a timeless Emily Jeremiah and Fleur Jeremiah Despite the Emancipation Act, his childhood home tragedy and hurls it into present-day Afghanistan. Nominated by: is still in the grip of colonial power, its people riven Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya was educated in politics Helsinki City Library, Finland by the legacy of slavery. Michel Jean finds himself and philosophy at Presidency College, Calcutta, caught between the powerful and the dispossessed. Finland, 1809. Henrik and Erik are brothers who and the University of Pennsylvania. His novels The As an artist, he enjoys the governor’s patronage, fought on opposite sides in the war between Sweden Gabriel Cluband and The Storyteller of Marrakesh have as a Trinidadian he shares easy wisdom and nips and Russia. With peace declared, they both return to been published in fourteen languages. He lives in the of rum with the local boat-builders. But domestic their snowed-in farm. But who is the master? Sexual Hudson Valley in upstate New York. tensions and haunting reminders of the past threaten tensions, old grudges, family secrets: all come to a his equanimity. Meanwhile, letters from his white, head in this dark and gripping saga. The Spinning Heart French wife and children remind him of their A Shakespearean drama from icy Finland. imminent arrival on the island.

Asko Sahlberg, born 1964, has acquired a fame in Lawrence Scott was born on a sugarcane estate in Finland that has yet to be replicated in the English Trinidad. Three of his books have been listed for the speaking world. He published his first novel in 2000 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. He divides his time and has written steadily since then, completing his between London and Port of Spain, Trinidad. ninth work, The Brothers, in 2010. Umbrella Dominion Will Self C. J. Sansom Nominated by: Nominated by: Oslo Public Libraries, Norway Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli, Italy Stockholm Public Library, Norway

A historical novel set in a parallel world where the For half a century Audrey Death has been in a state Germans have won the war and dominate European of semi-consciousness. Severed from the world of the and English politics. living after falling victim to Encephalitis lethargica, she has languished in Friern Barnet Mental Hospital. 1952. Twelve years have passed since Churchill Then, in 1971, maverick psychiatrist Dr Zack Busner lost to the appeasers and Britain surrendered to arrives. Nazi Germany after Dunkirk. As the long German Donal Ryan war against Russia rages on in the east, the British Audrey’s experiences of a bygone Edwardian Nominated by: people find themselves under dark authoritarian London: her socialist lover, her involvement with Cork City Libraries, Ireland rule: the press, radio and television are controlled; the Suffragists, and her work in a munitions factory Dublin City Public Libraries, Ireland the streets patrolled by violent auxiliary police and during the First World War, alternate with Dr ‘My father still lives back the road past the weir in British Jews face ever greater constraints. Defiance, Busner’s attempts to bring her back to life with a the cottage I was reared in. I go there every day to though, is growing. In Britain, Winston Churchill’s new and powerful drug. His investigations lead to see is he dead and every day he lets me down. He Resistance organization is increasingly a thorn in revelations that are both shocking and tragic, and hasn’t yet missed a day of letting me down.’ the government’s side. And in a Birmingham mental which will return to haunt him decades later. hospital an incarcerated scientist, Frank Muncaster, Will Self is the author of The Quantity Theory The fallout of Ireland’s financial collapse provokes may hold a secret that could change the balance of of Insanity, winner of the 1993 Geoffrey Faber dangerous tensions in a small Irish town. As the the world struggle for ever. Memorial Prize, Grey Area, Cock & Bull, My Idea of www.impacdublinaward.ie Eligible Titles 2014

Fun, The Sweet Smell of Psychosis, Great Apes, Dorian, Honour The Fallen Angel How the Dead Live – which was shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel of the Year 2002 – and Tough, Elif Shafak Daniel Silva Tough Toys for Tough, Tough Boys. Umbrella was Nominated by: Nominated by: shortlisted for the 2012 Man Booker prize. He lives Gradska Knjiznica Rijeka, Croatia Biblioteca Pública Municipal do Porto, Portugal in London. Pembe and Adem Toprak leave Turkey for London. After narrowly surviving his last operation, Gabriel Where’d You Go, Bernadette There they make new lives for their family. Yet the Allon, the wayward son of Israeli intelligence, traditions and beliefs of their home come with them has taken refuge behind the walls of the Vatican, – carried in the blood of their children, Iskender and where he is restoring one of Caravaggio’s greatest Esma. Trapped by past mistakes, the Toprak children masterpieces. But early one morning he is find their lives torn apart and transformed by a brutal summoned to St. Peter’s Basilica by Monsignor and chilling crime. Luigi Donati, the all-powerful private secretary to His Holiness Pope Paul VII. The body of a Set in Turkey and London in the 1970s, Honour beautiful woman lies broken beneath Michelangelo’s explores pain and loss, loyalty and betrayal, the clash magnificent dome. The Vatican police suspect of tradition and modernity, as well as the love and suicide, though Gabriel believes otherwise. So, it heartbreak that can tear any family apart. seems, does Donati, who calls upon Gabriel to Honour is a novel of love, betrayal and a clash of quietly pursue the truth—with one caveat. cultures. Gabriel soon learns that the dead woman had Elif Shafak is the acclaimed author of The Bastard of uncovered a dangerous secret that threatens a global Istanbul and The Forty Rules of Love and is the most criminal enterprise involved in looting timeless widely read female novelist in Turkey. Her work has treasures of antiquity. But there is more to this dark been translated into more than thirty languages. She network than just greed. And unless Gabriel can is married with two children and divides her time prevent a mysterious operative from committing a between Istanbul and London. devastating act of sabotage, the world will be plunged into a conflict of apocalyptic proportions... The Perfect Landscape Daniel Silva is the number one New York Times Ragna Sigurdardottir bestselling author of novels including, The Unlikely Translated from the original Icelandic by Sarah Bowen Spy, The Mark of the Assassin, The Marching Season, The Maria Semple Nominated by: Kill Artist and The Defector. He is married to NBC Nominated by: Borgarbókasafn Reykjavíkur, Iceland News Today correspondent Jamie Gangel; they live Limerick City Library, Ireland in Washington, D.C., with their two children. When a wealthy patron donates a valuable landscape Waterford City Libraries, Ireland painting to Reykjavik’s art museum, the staff can Public Library of Cincinnati Mr. Penumbra’s 24-hour Bookstore hardly believe its luck. It was painted by one of & Hamilton County, USA Iceland’s most beloved artists, and the acquisition Robin Sloan San Francisco Public Library, USA is sure to elevate the museum’s already sterling Nominated by: Bernadette Fox is notorious. reputation. Public Library of Cincinnati & Hamilton County, USA To Elgie Branch, a Microsoft wunderkind, she’s his For Hanna, a newly arrived art theorist, the Denver Public Library, USA hilarious, volatile, talented, troubled wife. To fellow acquisition is a chance to begin her job on a high Jacksonville Public Library, USA mothers at the school gate, she’s a menace. note; after all, she’s something of an expert on the artist. But when the museum’s conservator suggests A gleeful and exhilarating tale of global conspiracy, To design experts, she’s a revolutionary architect. the painting might be a fake, Hanna realizes the complex code-breaking, high-tech data visualization, And to 15-year-old Bee, she is a best friend and, museum’s reputation is not the only one in danger of young love, rollicking adventure, and the secret to quite simply, mum. crumbling. eternal life—mostly set in a hole-in-the-wall San Then Bernadette disappears. And Bee must take a Francisco bookstore. And so she sets out to authenticate the painting, trip to the end of the earth to find her. drawing on every ounce of skill that she possesses. The Great Recession has shuffled Clay Jannon out of Where’d You Go, Bernadette is a compulsively readable, his life as a San Francisco Web-design drone—and Ragna Sigurdardottir is a native of Reykjavik, irresistibly written, deeply touching novel about serendipity, sheer curiosity, and the ability to climb Iceland, and the author of five novels. She lives with misplaced genius and a mother and daughter’s place a ladder like a monkey has landed him a new gig her husband and their two daughters on the outskirts in the world. working the night shift at Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour of Reykjavik. Bookstore. But after just a few days on the job, Clay Maria Semple worked in Los Angeles as a television begins to realize that this store is even more curious writer for 15 years, working on hit shows including than the name suggests. The store must be a front Ellen, Saturday Night Live, Mad About You and for something larger, Clay concludes, and soon he’s Arrested Development. She lives in Seattle. embarked on a complex analysis of the customers’ behavior and roped his friends into helping to figure out just what’s going on. But once they bring their

www.impacdublinaward.ie Eligible Titles 2014 findings to Mr. Penumbra, it turns out the secrets in Chicago, where he teaches creative writing at The Light Between Oceans extend far outside the walls of the bookstore. Northwestern University. M.L. Stedman Robin Sloan grew up in Michigan and now splits The Purchase Nominated by: his time between San Francisco and the Internet. Linda Spalding The State Library of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia NW Nominated by: Limerick City Library, Ireland Calgary Public Library, Canada Zadie Smith Richland Library, Columbia, USA Ottawa Public Library, Canada Nominated by: Lincoln Library, Springfield, USA The State Library of South Australia, Adelaide In 1798, Daniel Dickinson, a young Quaker father Tom Sherbourne, released from the horrors of Stedelijke Openbare Bibliotheek Gent, Belgium and widower, leaves his home in Pennsylvania to the First World War, is now a lighthouse keeper, Halifax Public Libraries, Canada establish a new life. He sets out with two horses, a cocooned on a remote island with his young wife wagonful of belongings, his five children, a 15-year- Zadie Smith’s brilliant tragi-comic NW follows four Izzy, who is content in everything but her failure to old orphan wife, and a few land warrants for his Londoners – Leah, Natalie, Felix and Nathan – after have a child. future homestead. When Daniel trades a horse for a they’ve left their childhood council estate, grown up young slave, Onesimus, it sets in motion a struggle One April morning, a boat washes ashore carrying and moved on to different lives. From private houses in his conscience that will taint his life forever, and a dead man – and a crying baby. Safe from the real to public parks, at work and at play, their city is a chain of events that lead to two murders and the world, Tom and Izzy break the rules and follow their brutal, beautiful and complicated. family’s strange relationship with a runaway slave hearts. Yet after a chance encounter they each find that the named Bett. It is a decision with devastating consequences. choices they’ve made, the people they once were and Stripped down and as hard-edged as the realities of are now, can suddenly, rapidly unravel. A portrait of M.L. Stedman was born and raised in Western pioneer life, Spalding’s writing is nothing short of modern urban life, NW is funny, sad and urgent – as Australia and now lives in London. The Light stunning, as it instantly envelops the reader in the brimming with vitality as the city itself. Between Oceans is her first book. It has been sold world and time of the novel, and follows the lives of in 31 territories and is due to be made into a film. Zadie Smith was born in north-west London in unforgettable characters. Inspired by stories of the In 2012, it was voted Best Historical Novel by 1.5 1975. She is the author of the novels White Teeth, The author’s own ancestors, The Purchase is a resonant, million voters on the Goodreads website. Autograph Man and On Beauty, and of a collection of powerful and timeless novel. essays, Changing My Mind. She is also the editor of Linda Spalding was born and raised in Kansas. The Canvas The Book of Other People. She is the author of three previous novels and two Benjamin Stein This Bright River acclaimed works of non-fiction. The Purchase received Translated from the original German Canada’s prestigious Governor General’s Award for by Brian Zumhagen Patrick Somerville English-language fiction. Spalding lives in Toronto, Nominated by: Nominated by: where she is an editor of the literary magazine Stadtbibliothek Bremen, Germany Chicago Public Library, USA ‘Brick’. Amnon Zichroni, a psychoanalyst in Zurich, A compelling story of young love and old secrets. Risk encourages Minsky to write a book about his Lauren Sheehan’s career in medicine came to a halt C.K. Stead traumatic childhood experience in a Nazi death after a chain of violent events abroad. Now she’s camp, a memoir which the journalist Jan Wechsler Nominated by: back in the safest place she knows—St. Helens, claims is a fiction. Ten years later, a suitcase arrives Wellington City Libraries, New Zealand Wisconsin—cut off from career, friendship, and on Wechsler’s doorstep. Allegedly, he lost the suitcase romance. Recently divorced New Zealander Sam Nola returns on a trip to Israel, but Wechsler has no memory of to London, where he spent two years in his early the suitcase, nor the trip, and he travels to Israel to Ben Hanson’s aimless young life has bottomed out twenties. It is early 2003, and on both sides of the investigate the mystery. But it turns out he has been after a series of bad decisions, but a surprising offer Atlantic the case for military intervention in Iraq is to Israel before, and his host on the trip, Amnon from his father draws him home for what looks like being made – or fabricated. Zichroni, has been missing ever since. . . his final second chance. In Wisconsin, he finds his family fractured, still unable to face the truth behind But life for Sam has never been better: a grown- The Canvas is a mind-bending investigation of his troubled cousin’s death a decade earlier. up, half-French daughter from a long ago affair memory, identity, truth, and delusion, loosely based has recently got in touch, and he has walked into on the true story of Binjamin Wilkomirski, whose As Lauren cautiously expands her horizons and Ben a lucrative role in the booming banking sector. It fabricated 1995 Holocaust memoir transfixed the wrestles with his regrets and mistakes, their paths is only when he learns of the deaths of two friends reading public. intersect. Could each be exactly what the other within a week that intrigue begins to intrude on needs? Or the last thing in the world either one can Benjamin Stein was born in East Berlin. He has his contentment and life begins to feel a little more handle? worked as an editor and correspondent for various precarious. computer magazines and has been a corporate Patrick Somerville is the author of Trouble, a book C.K. Stead is the renowned author of poetry, IT advisor since 1998. He owns the author-run of short fiction, and The Cradle, which was a New literary criticism, short stories, and of novels such as publishing house Edition Neue Moderne and writes York Times Best Book of 2009, and short-listed Mansfield and My Name Was Judas. He was awarded the literary weblog “Turmsegler.” He is married with for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. He is the CBE for services to New Zealand literature and two children and lives in Munich. at work on a second novel, and lives with his wife was the winner of the 2010 Sunday Times Short Story Award. www.impacdublinaward.ie Eligible Titles 2014

A Matter of Life and Death or Something survivor of a brutal Japanese wartime camp, seeks Narcopolis solace among the jungle fringed plantations of Ben Stephenson Northern Malaya where she grew up as a child. Jeet Thayil Nominated by: There she discovers the only Japanese garden in Nominated by: Saint John Free Public Library, New Brunswick, Malaya, and its owner and creator, the enigmatic India International Centre Library, New Delhi Canada Aritomo. Stray dogs lope in packs. Street vendors hustle. Even though he’s only ten years old, Arthur Despite her hatred of the Japanese, Yun Ling seeks Hookers call for custom through the bars of their Williams knows lots of things for sure. He knows to engage Aritomo to create a garden in Kuala cages as their pimps slouch in doorways in the half- all about trilobites, and bridge, and that he doesn’t Lumpur. Aritomo refuses, but agrees to accept Yun light. There is an underworld whisper of a new terror: want to be Victoria Brown’s boyfriend. He knows his Ling as his apprentice ‘until the monsoon comes.’ the Pathar Maar, the stone killer, whose victims are real dad is probably flying a hot-air balloon across the nameless, invisible poor. There are too many of But the Garden of Evening Mists is also a place of the Pacific, and he knows that Simon, the guy who them to count in this broken city. mystery. Who is Aritomo and how did he come to pretends to be his dad, does absolutely nothing leave Japan? And is the real story of how Yun Ling Narcopolis is a rich, chaotic, hallucinatory dream of a interesting. But when Arthur finds a weather-worn managed to survive the war perhaps the darkest novel that captures the Bombay of the 1970s in all notebook in the woods behind his house, all he has secret of all? its compelling squalor. With a cast of pimps, pushers, are questions. Why was its author, Phil, so sad, and poets, gangsters and eunuchs, it is a journey into a why does it end on page 43? Suddenly, there are Tan Twan Eng was born in Penang, Malaysia. The sprawling underworld written in electric and utterly other questions too: Why do people abandon people? Gift of Rain – his first novel – was longlisted for the original prose. Man Booker Prize 2007 and has been translated Arthur embarks on a top-secret investigation to into six languages. The Garden of Evening Mists was Jeet Thayil was born in 1959 in Kerala, India. His find out who Phil is—or was. But getting straight shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2012. He four poetry collections include These Errors Are answers from grown-ups is impossible, and before divides his time between Kuala Lumpur and Cape Correct and English. He is the editor of The Bloodaxe long, the only thing he knows for sure is that Town. Book of Contemporary Indian Poets. Nacropolis, his first everything he thought he knew about life is probably novel, has been translated into five languages. He wrong and that what he has to do is ten times bigger The Guard lives in Delhi. than what he can do. Peter Terrin The Lower River Ben Stephenson was born in New Brunswick. He Translated from the original Dutch by David Colmer studied fine art at NSCAD University, and lives in Nominated by: Paul Theroux Canada. A Matter of Life and Death or Something is Muntpunt, Brussels, Belgium Nominated by: his first novel. Openbare Bibliotheek Amsterdam, Jacksonville Public Library, USA The Netherlands The Garden of Evening Mists When he was a young man, Ellis Hock spent four Openbare Bibliotheek Eindhoven, The Netherlands of the best years of his life with the Peace Corps in The Libraries of The Hague / Public Libraries of The Malawi. So when his wife of forty-two years leaves Hague, The Netherlands him, he decides to return to the village where he Harry and Michel live in the basement of a luxury was stationed in search of the happiness he’d been apartment block, guarding its residents. Over the missing since he left. But what he finds is not what course of a weekend, the residents leave the block he expected. The school he built is a ruin, the church one by one – all apart from a man on floor 29. and clinic are gone, and poverty and apathy have set in among the people. In the grey, airless monotony of the basement, Harry and Michel stick to their posts. The world might They remember Ellis and welcome him with open be at war or plunged into nuclear winter; they may arms. Soon, however, their overtures turn menacing; be the last inhabitants in the city. All they know they demand money and refuse to let him leave the is that if they are vigilant, ‘the organisation’ will village. Is his new life an escape or a trap? reward them: promotion to an elite cadre of security Paul Theroux is the author of many highly acclaimed officers remains their shining goal, and their days are books; his novels include The Lower River and The punctuated by vivid dreams of everything they are Mosquito Coast, and his renowned travel books missing. include Ghost Train to the Eastern Star and Dark Star But what if there were no-one left to guard? And if Safari. He lives in Hawaii and on Cape Cod. the promised third officer arrives, how will he fit into Michel and Harry’s studied routine of boredom and Ru paranoia? Kim Thúy Tan Twan Eng Peter Terrin has written for the theatre, is active as a Nominated by: Nominated by: columnist, and has several times been nominated for Saint John Free Public Library, New Brunswick, Cape Town Central Library, South Africa the A.K.O. and Libris literature prizes for his novels. Canada Malaya, 1949. After studying law at Cambridge He was the Flemish winner of the 2010 European Ottawa Public Library, Canada Literature Prize for The Guard. and time spent helping to prosecute Japanese war Kim Thúy’s Ru is literature at its most crystalline: the criminals, Yun Ling Teoh, herself the scarred lone flow of a life on the tides of unrest and on to more www.impacdublinaward.ie Eligible Titles 2014 peaceful waters. In vignettes of exquisite clarity, sharp Mateship with Birds is a tender, witty novel of young Anne Tyler was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, observation and sly wit, we are carried along on an lust and mature love. A glorious tale of innocence in 1941 and grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. unforgettable journey from a palatial residence in lost, it celebrates life on one small farm in a vast This is her nineteenth novel; her eleventh,Breathing Saigon to a crowded and muddy Malaysian refugee ancient landscape, as a collection of misfits question Lessons, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1988. She camp, and onward to a new life in Quebec. There, the what a family might be. is a member of the American Academy of Arts and young girl feels the embrace of a new community, Letters. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland. Carrie Tiffany was born in West Yorkshire. Her and revels in the chance to be part of the American family migrated to Western Australia in the early Dream. As an adult, the waters become rough again: Night Dancer 1970s. Her first novel, Everyman’s Rules for Scientific now a mother of two sons, she must learn to shape Living, was shortlisted for the 2006 Orange Prize Chika Unigwe her love around the younger boy’s autism. Moving and the Miles Franklin Award. Nominated by: seamlessly from past to present, from history to Muntpunt, Brussels, Belgium memory and back again, Ru is a book that celebrates The Testament of Mary life in all its wonder. Mma has just buried her mother, and now she is Colm Tóibín alone. She has been left everything. Kim Thúy has worked as a seamstress, interpreter, Nominated by: lawyer and restaurant owner. She currently lives in But she’s also inherited her mother’s bad name. Winnipeg Public Library, Canada Montreal where she devotes herself to writing. A bold, brash woman, the only thing her mother Bibliothèque Municipale de Mulhouse, France refused to discuss was her past. Why did she flee her Mateship with Birds In the ancient town of Ephesus, Mary lives alone, family and bring her daughter to a new town when years after her son’s crucifixion. She has no interest she was a baby? What was she escaping from? in collaborating with the authors of the Gospel – her Abandoned now, Mma has no knowledge of her keepers, who provide her with food and shelter and father or her family – but she is desperate to find out. visit her regularly. She does not agree that her son is Night Dancer is a powerful and moving novel about the Son of God; nor that his death was “worth it”. the relationship between mothers and daughters, Mary judges herself ruthlessly (she did not stay at about the bonds of family, about knowing when to the foot of the Cross until her son died – she fled, to fulfil your duty, and when you must be brave enough save herself), and is equally harsh on her judgement not to. Presenting a vista of Nigeria over the past of others. This woman who we know from centuries half-century, it is a vibrant and heartfelt exploration of paintings and scripture as the docile, loving, of one woman’s search for belonging. obedient, worshipful mother of Christ becomes a tragic heroine with the relentless eloquence of Chika Unigwe was born in Nigeria and now lives Electra, Medea or Antigone. in Belgium with her husband and four children. She is an award-winning short story writer and novelist Colm Tóibín is the author of seven novels, including who writes in Dutch and in English. She holds a The Blackwater Lightship; The Master, winner of the PhD in Literature from the University of Leiden in IMPAC DUBLIN award and the Los Angeles The Netherlands. Times Book Prize; Brooklyn, winner of the Costa Book Award; as well as two story collections. Twice Dirt shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Tóibín lives in Dublin and New York. David Vann Nominated by: Carrie Tiffany The Beginner’s Goodbye Universitäts-und Landesbibliothek Nominated by: Anne Tyler Bonn, Germany The National Library of Australia, Canberra Oslo Public Libraries, Norway The State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, Nominated by: Australia Leipziger Stadtische Bibliotheken, Germany The year is 1985, and twenty-two-year-old Galen Margarita Rudomino All-Russia State Library for Hartford Public Library, USA lives with his emotionally dependent mother in a secluded old house. They survive on the family’s Foreign Literature, Moscow, Russia Crippled in his right arm and leg, Aaron grew up trust fund—old money that his aunt, Helen, and fending off a sister who constantly wanted to manage On the outskirts of a country town in the early seventeen-year-old cousin, Jennifer, are determined him. So when he meets Dorothy, an outspoken, 1950s, a lonely farmer trains his binoculars on a to get their hands on. raucous family of kookaburras roosting next to his independent young woman, she’s like a breath of dairy. As Harry observes the birds through a year of fresh air. He marries her without hesitation, and they Galen, a New Age believer who considers himself an feast, famine, birth, death, war, romance and song, have a relatively happy, unremarkable marriage. But old soul, yearns for transformation: to free himself his neighbour, Betty, has her own set of binoculars when a tree crashes into their house and Dorothy from the corporeal, to be as weightless as air, to walk trained on him. is killed, Aaron feels as though he has been erased on water. But he’s powerless to stop the manic binges forever. Only Dorothy’s unexpected appearances that overtake him, leading him to fixate on forbidden Betty’s son, Michael, gravitates to the gentle man from the dead – in their house, on the roadway, in desires. A prisoner of his body, he is obsessed with next door, and Harry, sensing Michael is ready to the market – help him to live in the moment and thoughts of the boldly flirtatious Jennifer and dreams stretch his wings, decides to teach him about sex. to find some peace. Gradually, Aaron discovers that of shedding himself of the clinging mother whose Harry knows everything about the land. But what maybe for this beginner there is indeed a way to say fears and needs weigh him down. does he know about women? goodbye.

www.impacdublinaward.ie Eligible Titles 2014

An exhilarating portrayal of a legacy of violence and with life than ever, he starts asking questions. The With compassion and insight, Richard Wagamese madness, Dirt is an entirely feverish read. questions become an obsession that leads him to traces through his fictional characters the decline Ricardo’s daughter, back to early 1960s marijuana of a culture and a cultural way. For Saul, taken David Vann is an internationally bestselling author smuggling, and a time before the cocaine trade forcibly from the land and his family when he’s sent whose work has been translated into eighteen trapped a whole generation of Colombians in a living to residential school, salvation comes for a while languages. He is the winner of fourteen prizes. A nightmare of fear and random death. through his incredible gifts as a hockey player. But Guggenheim fellow, former Stegner fellow and in the harsh realities of 1960s Canada, he battles National Endowment for the Arts fellow, he is a Juan Gabriel Vásquez was born in Bogotá. His obdurate racism and the spirit-destroying effects of professor at the University of Warwick in England. previous books include The Informers, which was cultural alienation and displacement. shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction The Dream of the Celt Prize, and The Secret History of Costaguana, which Richard Wagamese is an Ojibway from the Mario Vargas Llosa won the Qwerty prize in Barcelona. His books have Wabaseemoong First Nation in northwestern Translated from the Spanish by Edith Grossman been published in fifteen languages worldwide. After Ontario. He is the author of four novels, including sixteen years in France, Belgium and Spain, he now Dream Wheels, winner of the 2007 Canadian Authors Nominated by: lives in Bogotá. Association Award for Fiction. His autobiographical Bibliothèques Municipales, Genéve, Switzerland book For Joshua was published to critical acclaim, and In 1916, the Irish nationalist Roger Casement Dublinesque One Native Life was selected as one of the Globe and was hanged by the British government for treason. Enrique Vila-Matas Mail’s Top 100 Books of the Year. Casement had dedicated his life to improving Translated from the original Spanish by The Age of Miracles the plight of oppressed peoples around the world. Rosalind Harvey & Anne McLean But when he dared to draw a parallel between the Nominated by: Karen Thompson Walker injustices he witnessed in African and American Biblioteca Demonstrativa de Brasília – Fundacao Nominated by: colonies and those committed by the British in Biblioteca Nacional, Brazil Bibliothèque Municipale Á Vocation Regionale de Northern Ireland, he became involved in a cause that Dublin City Public Libraries, Ireland Nice, France led to his imprisonment and execution. Ultimately, the scandals surrounding Casement’s trial and Samuel Riba is about to turn 60. A successful ‘It is never what you worry over that comes to pass in eventual hanging marred his image to such a degree publisher in Barcelona, he is increasingly prone to the end. The real catastrophies are always different – that his pioneering human rights work wasn’t fully attacks of anxiety and, looking for distraction, he unimagined, unprepared for, unknown…’ reexamined until the 1960s. The Dream of the Celt is a concocts a spur-of-the-moment trip to Dublin, a city One morning, Julia and her parents wake up in their fascinating fictional account of an extraordinary man he has never visited but once dreamed about. suburban home in California to discover, along with in the original and dynamic style of Nobel Laureate He sets off for Dublin on the pretext of honouring the rest of the world, that the rotation of the earth Mario Vargas Llosa. James Joyce’s Ulysses on Bloomsday. But as he and his is noticeably slowing. The enormity of this is almost Mario Vargas Llosa was awarded the Nobel Prize friends gather in the cemetery to give their orations, beyond comprehension. And yet, even if the world is, in Literature in 2010. Peru’s foremost writer, he has a mysterious figure in a mackintosh resembling in fact, coming to an end, as some assert, day-to- been awarded the Cervantes Prize, the Spanish- Joyce’s protégé, Samuel Beckett, hovers in the day life must go on. Julia, facing the loneliness and speaking world’s most distinguished literary honor, background. Is it Beckett, or is it the writer of genius despair of an awkward adolescence, witnesses the and the Jerusalem Prize. His many works include that Riba has spent his whole career trying, and impact of this phenomenon on the world, on the The Feast of the Goat, The Bad Girl, Aunt Julia and the failing, to find? community, on her family and on herself. Scriptwriter, The War of the End of the World, and The From one of Spain’s greatest writers, a witty, moving Karen Thompson Walker is a graduate of UCLA Storyteller. He lives in London. novel about art, life, death and James Joyce. and the Columbia MFA program. A former book editor, she wrote The Age of Miracles in the mornings The Sound of Things Falling Enrique Vila-Matas was born in Barcelona in 1948. before work. Born and raised in San Diego, His extraordinary literary oeuvre includes Bartlby & Juan Gabriel Vásquez California, she now lives in Brooklyn with her Co., Montano’s Malady and Never Any End to Paris. Translated from the original Spanish by Anne McLean husband. He won the Premio Rómulo Gallegos in 2001. Nominated by: Dublinesque was shortlisted for the Independent Biblioteca Daniel Cosío Villegas El Colegio de Mesmerized Foreign Fiction Prize 2013. His work has been México, Mexico City translated into 30 languages. Alissa Walser No sooner does he get to know Ricardo Laverde Translated from the original German by Jamie Bulloch than disaffected young Colombian lawyer Antonio Indian Horse Nominated by: Yammara realises that his new friend has a secret. Richard Wagamese Stadtbibliothek Bremen, Germany Antonio’s fascination with Ricardo begins by casual Leipziger Stadtische Bibliotheken, Germany Nominated by: acquaintance in a seedy Bogotá billiard hall and Ottawa Public Library, Canada Mozart’s Vienna. A crucible for scientific grows until the day Ricardo receives a cassette tape in experimentation and courtly intrigue, as Europe’s an unmarked envelope. When they play it, Antonio Saul Indian Horse has hit bottom. His last binge finest minds vie for imperial favour. sees tears running down Ricardo’s cheeks; the next almost killed him, and now he’s a reluctant resident minute, the ex-pilot has gone. in a treatment centre for alcoholics. But Saul wants In a colourful, chaotic private hospital that echoes peace, and he grudgingly comes to see that he’ll find with the shrieks of hysterical patients, Franz Anton Shortly afterwards, Ricardo is shot dead on a street it only through telling his story. With him, readers Mesmer is developing a series of controversial cure- corner in Bogotá and Antonio is caught in the hail embark on a journey back through the life he’s led as alls for body and mind. of bullets. Lucky to survive, and more out of love a northern Ojibway, with all its joys and sorrows. www.impacdublinaward.ie Eligible Titles 2014

When he is asked to help restore the sight of a blind Skagboys Bloomsbury in 2006, while his play, Terre Haute, was musical prodigy favoured by the Empress herself, published by Methuen Drama in 2007. he senses that fame, and even immortality, is within Irvine Welsh his grasp. Mesmer knows that he will have to gain Nominated by: Care of Wooden Floors her trust if he is to open her eyes. But at what cost The National Library Service, Bridgetown, Will Wiles to her fragile talent? And will their intimacy result Barbados Nominated by: in scandal? Stockholm Public Library, Sweden Tampere City Library, Finland Alissa Walser is a writer, translator and painter Mark Renton has it all: he’s good-looking, young, Bergen Offentlige Bibliotek, Norway living in Frankfurt am Main. She is the author with a pretty girlfriend and a place at university. But Oskar is a minimalist composer best known for of three volumes of short stories, and for her first there’s no room for him in the 1980s. Thatcher’s his piece ‘Variations on Tram Timetables’. He lives novel Mesmerized she was awarded the Spycher government is destroying working-class communities with his wife and two cats in an unnamed Eastern Literaturpreis in 2010. across Britain, and the post-war certainties of full European city. But this book isn’t really about employment, educational opportunity and a welfare Oskar. Oskar is in Los Angeles, having his marriage Beautiful Ruins state are gone. When his family starts to fracture, dismantled by lawyers. Meanwhile, he has entrusted Mark’s life swings out of control and he succumbs to an old friend to take care of his perfect, beautiful the defeatism which has taken hold in Edinburgh’s apartment. grimmer areas. The way out is heroin. Despite Oskar leaving extensive notes on how to It’s no better for his friends. Spud Murphy is paid off keep his flat in pristine condition, a tiny oversight from his job, Tommy Lawrence feels himself being initiates a chain of farcical, and even fatal, disasters. sucked into a life of petty crime and violence. Only Care of Wooden Floors is about loneliness, friendship Sick Boy, the supreme manipulator of the opposite and the quest for, and struggle against, perfection. sex, seems to ride the current, scamming and And it is, a little, about how to take care of wooden hustling his way through it all. floors. The prequel to the world-renowned Trainspotting, Will Wiles is an architecture and design journalist. this is an exhilarating and moving book, full of the He lives in London. scabrous humour, salty vernacular and appalling behaviour that has made Irvine Welsh a household An Available Man name. Hilma Wolitzer Irvine Welsh is the author of eight previous novels Nominated by: and four books of shorter fiction. He currently lives Cape Breton Regional Library, Sydney, Canada in Chicago. When Edward Schuyler, a modest and bookish Jack Holmes and His Friend sixty-two-year-old science teacher, is widowed, Edmund White he finds himself ambushed by female attention. There are plenty of unattached women around, but Nominated by: Jess Walter a healthy, handsome, available man is a rare and Lisbon Central Library, Portugal Nominated by: desirable creature. Jacksonville Public Library, USA Jack Holmes is suffering from unrequited love. It The problem is that Edward doesn’t feel available. Seattle Public Library, USA doesn’t look as if there will ever be anyone else he He’s still mourning his beloved wife, Bee, and prefers San Francisco Public Library, USA falls for: the other men he takes to bed never stay solitude. But then his stepchildren surprise him by for long. From the moment it opens—on a rocky patch of placing a personal ad in The New York Review of Italian coastline, circa 1962, when a daydreaming Jack’s friend Will Wright comes from old stock, has Books on his behalf. Soon the letters flood in, and young innkeeper looks out over the water and spies a aspirations to be a writer and, like Jack, works on the Edward is torn between his loyalty to Bee’s memory mysterious woman approaching him on a boat—Jess Northern Review. Jack will introduce Will to the and his growing longing for connection. Gradually, Walter’s Beautiful Ruins is a dazzling, yet deeply beautiful, brittle young woman he will marry, but is reluctantly, he begins dating and his encounters human, roller coaster of a novel. From the lavish set discreet about his own adventures in love – for this are variously startling, comical, and sad. Just when of Cleopatra to the shabby revelry of the Edinburgh is sixties New York, literary and intense, before gay Edward thinks he has the game figured out, a chance Fringe Festival, to the back lots of contemporary liberation; a concoction of old society, bohemians meeting proves that love always arrives when it’s Hollywood, Beautiful Ruins is gloriously inventive rich and poor, sleek European immigrants and least expected. and constantly surprising—a story of flawed yet transplanted Midwesterners. Against this charged Hilma Wolitzer is the author of several novels, fascinating people navigating the rocky shores of backdrop, the different lives of Jack and Will including Summer Reading, The Doctor’s Daughter, their lives while clinging to their improbable dreams. intertwine, and as their loves come and go, they will Hearts, Ending, and Tunnel of Love, as well as a always be, at the very least, friends. Jess Walter is the author of five novels, including nonfiction book, The Company of Writers. She has The Zero, a finalist for the 2006 National Book Edmund White is the author of many critically taught writing at the University of Iowa, New York Award, and Citizen Vince, winner of the 2005 Edgar acclaimed books, the most recent being The Flaneur. University, and Columbia University. Allan Poe Award for best novel. His books have He now teaches at Princeton University. His been translated into twenty languages. He lives in acclaimed autobiography, My Lives, was published by Spokane, Washington. www.impacdublinaward.ie Eligible Titles 2014

The Bellwether Revivals The Prisoner of Heaven The Method Benjamin Wood Juli Zeh Nominated by: Translated from the original German Tampere City Library, Finland by Sally-Ann Spencer Nominated by: Bright, bookish Oscar Lowe has made a new life for Stadtbibliothek Bremen, Germany himself amid the colleges and spires of Cambridge. Leipziger Stadtische Bibliotheken, Germany He has grown to love the quiet routine of his life as Wojewódzka i Miejska Biblioteka Publiczna, Lódz, a care assistant at a local nursing home. But when Poland he meets and falls in love with Iris Bellwether, a beautiful and enigmatic medical student at King’s Mia Holl lives in a state governed by ‘The Method’, College, Oscar is drawn into her world of scholarship where good health is the highest duty of the citizen. and privilege, and soon becomes embroiled in the Everyone must submit medical data and sleep strange machinations of her brilliant but troubled records to the authorities on a monthly basis, and brother, Eden, who believes he can adapt the theories regular exercise is mandatory. Mia is young and of a forgotten Baroque composer to heal people with beautiful, a successful scientist who is outwardly music. Eden’s self-belief knows no bounds, and as obedient but with an intellect that marks her as he draws his sister and closed circle of friends into subversive. Convinced that her brother has been a series of disturbing experiments to prove himself wrongfully convicted of a terrible crime, Mia comes right, Oscar realises the extent of the danger facing up against the full force of a regime determined to them all... control every aspect of its citizens’ lives.

Benjamin Wood was born in 1981 and grew up The Method, set in the middle of the twenty-first in north-west England. In 2004, he was awarded century, deals with pressing questions: to what extent a Commonwealth Scholarship to attend the MFA Carlos Ruiz Zafón can the state curtail the rights of the individual? And Creative Writing Programme at the University Translated from the original Spanish by Lucia Graves does the individual have a right to resist? of British Columbia, Canada. Benjamin is now a Nominated by: Juli Zeh was born in 1974 and lives in Brandenburg. lecturer in Creative Writing at Birkbeck, University Lisbon Central Library, Portugal She has won numerous awards, including the of London. The Bellwether Revivals is his first novel. The Prisoner of Heaven returns to the world created international Per Olov Enquist Award and the The Rent Collector by Zafón in The Shadow of the Wind. French Prix Cévennes for Best European Novel. Her work has been translated into thirty languages. Cameron Wright Barcelona, 1957. It is the week before Christmas in the Sempere & Sons bookshop. Daniel Sempere Nominated by: has married the love of his life, Bea, and they have Laramie County Library System, Cheyenne, USA had a son whilst their partner in crime, Fermín, has Survival for Ki Lim and Sang Ly is a daily battle been busy preparing for his wedding to Bernarda at Stung Meanchey, the largest municipal waste in the New Year. Just when it seems as if luck is dump in all of Cambodia. They make their living finally smiling on them, a mysterious figure with scavenging recyclables from the trash. Life would be a pronounced limp enters the shop. He insists on hard enough without the worry for their chronically buying the most expensive volume on display – a ill child, Nisay, and the added expense of medicines beautiful illustrated edition of The Count of Monte that are not working. Cristo – and then proceeds to inscribe the book with the words ‘For Fermín Romero de Torres, who came Just when things seem worst, Sang Ly learns a back from the dead and who holds the key to the secret about the ill-tempered rent collector who future’. comes demanding money – a secret that sets in motion a tide that will change the life of everyone Who is this man and what does he want of Fermín? it sweeps past. The Rent Collector is a story of hope, Carlos Ruiz Zafón is the author of six novels, of one woman’s journey to save her son and another including the international phenomenon The Shadow woman’s chance at redemption. of the Wind, and The Angel’s Game. His work has been Cameron Wright began writing to get out of published in more than forty different languages, attending MBA School at the time and it proved and honoured with numerous international awards. the better decision. His first novel, Letters for Emily, He divides his time between Barcelona, and Los was a “Readers Choice” award winner, as well as Angeles. a selection of the Doubleday Book Club and the Literary Guild. It was published in several foreign countries. He lives with his wife and four children in Utah, just south of Salt Lake City.

www.impacdublinaward.ie 2014 Judging Panel Photo: Stacy Liu Stacy Photo: Tash Aw Maya Jaggi Tash Aw is the author of three novels, The Maya Jaggi is an award-winning critic and cultural Harmony Silk Factory, Map of the Invisible World journalist in Britain who received an honorary and Five Star Billionaire, which have won the doctorate from The Open University in 2012 for her Whitbread and Commonwealth Prizes and twice outstanding contribution to education and culture been longlisted for the MAN Booker Prize; they over 25 years, especially in ‘extending the map of have been translated into twenty four languages. international writing.’ A longstanding profile writer His short fiction has won an O. Henry Award and critic for the Guardian Review, she also writes and been published in A Public Space and the for the Financial Times, Independent, Newsweek and landmark Granta 100, amongst others. He lives Literary Review, and appears on BBC radio and in London. television. Educated at Oxford University and the London School of Economics, she has interviewed 12 Nobel prizewinners in literature, and judged literary awards including the Orange, David Cohen, Caine and Commonwealth Writers prizes. She Photo: Noel Hillis chaired the Man Asian Literary Prize jury in Hong Catherine Dunne Kong in 2013. Catherine Dunne is the author of nine novels. The most recent, The Things We Know Now, won the 700th anniversary Giovanni Boccaccio International Prize for Fiction in 2013. It was also shortlisted for the Eason Novel of the Year at the Irish Book Awards 2013. Catherine has Maciej Świerkocki also published one work of non-fiction, a social Maciej Świerkocki is a former academic teacher history of Irish immigrants in London, called with a PhD in comparative literature, currently An Unconsidered People. She was awarded the an award-winning freelance translator, critic, International Prize at the Vigevano Literary screenwriter, novelist and editor. He has translated Festival in Vigevano, Italy, in 2006, and has been more than 50 books from English into Polish, shortlisted for, among others, the Kerry Group including works by John Barth, Angela Carter, Irish Novel of the Year Award and the Italian Cormac McCarthy, Ciaran Carson, Robert Graves, Booksellers’ Award. Catherine Dunne lives in Richard Hughes, Jack Kerouac, Henry Miller, John Dublin. Irving, Howard Jacobson, John Updike and W.B. Yeats. His prose was published in English in The Tampa Review and The Yellow Nib. His latest book, a collection of essays called Echa Postmodernizmu (Echoes of Postmodernism) came out in 2010. He is a Member of the Polish Writers’ Association and the Giles Foden Polish Film Academy. He lives and works in Łódź, Giles Foden was born in 1967 to Irish and Poland. English parents. He grew up mostly in Africa, spending his summer holidays in north Kerry. Between 1990 and 2006 he worked on newspapers and magazines in Britain, during which period he published his debut novel The Last King of Scotland, which won Eugene R. Sullivan the 1998 Whitbread First Novel Award. He Hon. Eugene R. Sullivan, non-voting chair of is author of three other novels — Ladysmith, the judging panel, is a former Chief Judge of a US Zanzibar and Turbulence — and a work of Court of Appeals and brings a wealth of experience narrative non-fiction, Mimi and Toutou Go Forth. from sixteen years on the bench. His first novel,The Giles is currently Professor of Creative Writing Majority Rules, was published in 2005. The second at the University of East Anglia. He has been a novel of his political thriller trilogy, The Report to the judge on the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award, Judiciary, was published in 2008. When not recalled the Hennessy New Irish Writing Award, and the to the Federal Bench, Judge Sullivan is a partner in MAN Booker Prize. the Washington, D.C. law firm of Pepper Hamilton, LLP.

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www.dublincityofliterature.ie DUBLIN – THE INTERNATIONAL DIMENSION Eligible Books in Translation, 2014

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The International IMPAC DUBLIN Award is presented annually for a novel written in English Contact us or translated into English. Founded in partnership with IMPAC, the Award is an initiative of International IMPAC DUBLIN Literary Award Dublin City Council, the municipal government of Dublin. Dublin City Library & Archive 138-144 Pearse Street Patron of the Award: The Lord Mayor of Dublin Ireland

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