Online sales make John Boyne favourite to pick up book award

THE outcome of a public vote for the best Irish book of the last decade may not be revealed until next week, but sales through one website alone would make John Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas a hands down winner.

The Dubliner’s 2006 novel has already been leading the betting ahead of the announcement on Monday after 5,000 votes are counted for the Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards Book of the Decade.

A total of 50 Irish titles published in the last 10 years have been shortlisted, but Amazon.co.uk reports that The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas represents more than one-in-four of all sales for those books in the running.