Dev book wows judges to win top awards

DIARMAID FERRITER won an unprecedented three Irish Book Awards with his book, Judging Dev, at the 2008 Irish Book Awards ceremony in Dublin yesterday.

Anne Enright, Trevor Brennan, Roddy Doyle, Julia Kelly, Brendan O’Brien and Anita Notaro also won awards, but Ferriter was the toast of the evening, as Judging Dev won the three categories in which it was nominated.

The Galaxy Irish Popular Fiction Book of the Year Award, a public voting category, was won by Anita Notaro, author of Take A Look At Me Now. Anne Enright’s Man Booker prize-winning novel, The Gathering, won the most prestigious award of the evening, the Hughes & Hughes Irish Novel of the Year Award, beating fellow Man Booker winning author, John Banville, writing under his alias, Benjamin Black.

The awards ceremony at the Mansion House saw a host of national and international authors come together to celebrate the best of Irish literature published in the last year.