SWEETLAND opens with ghostly voices heard against the wail of the foghorn by Moses Sweetland, a fisherman stranded at sea overnight in the fog. The voices belong to a boatload of dying Sri Lankan migrants, set adrift without food or water in the North Atlantic by unscrupulous people-traffickers.

Baffed out in the street as if taking a spell

Three Irish authors - Colum McCann, Colm Toibin and William Trevor - have been shortlisted for the world’s richest literary prize.