Six Irish books nominated for €100,000 Impac award

SIX Irish books have been nominated for the €100,000 International Impac Dublin Literary Award.

The list of 137 novels also includes this year’s Pulitzer Prize winner, The Road, by Cormac McCarthy and Mr Pip by Lloyd Jones which won the 2007 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize.

The annual award, now in its 19th year, is a joint initiative between Dublin City Council and global management consultants, Impac. It is the world’s most valuable annual literary prize for a single work of fiction published in English.

The Irish books nominated include The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne, The Secret Life of E Robert Pendleton by Michael Collins and This Man and Me by Alison Jameson.

Completing the Irish entries are Tenderwire by Claire Kilroy, Winterwood by Patrick McCabe and Zoli by Colum McCann.

The nominations come from 161 libraries in 121 cities worldwide.

Dublin City Council will announce the shortlist in April 2008 and the winning novel will be announced by the Lord Mayor in June.

Other authors with Irish connections include Maggie O’Farrell who was born in Northern Ireland, Danish writer Christian Jurgensen and English writer David Mitchell who both live in Ireland.

Canadian Peter Behren’s novel The Law of Dreams is set within the harshness of the Irish Famine and is based on his own family history.

Dublin City librarian Deirdre Ellis King said the books span 15 languages, 27 of which are translated from languages such as Afrikaans and Hebrew.

“These are books that might not otherwise come to the attention of Irish readers, 25 of them are first novels,” she said.

“The spread of cities participating in the nomination process continues to grow. This year, libraries in the cities of Tallinn in Estonia and Lucknow in India put forward nominations for the first time.”

Lord Mayor Cllr Paddy Bourke called on people to go down to their local library and check out the list of nominated books.

“What sets this award apart from other awards is that the books are nominated through a truly democratic process, that is, through the worldwide public library system,” he said.

Previous winners of the prestigious award include Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson last year and The Master by Colm Toibin in 2006.