Irish Authors Long-listed for Booker Prize 2018

Culture
24 Jul 18

Credit: Kathrin Baumbach

Irish authors Donal Ryan, Anna Burns and Sally Rooney have all been long-listed for the prestigious literary prize.

This is the second-time that Tipperary writer Donal Ryan has been long-listed for the award for his latest novel From A Low And Quiet Sea. While this is the first time that both the Northern Irish author Anna Burns and Sally Rooney, from Mayo, are up for the award.

For the first time ever, a graphic novel is on the list: Nick Drnaso's Sabrina. “We all read it and were blown away by it,” said the judge and bestselling crime novelist Val McDermid. “The graphic novel has increasingly become front and centre in terms of storytelling [and] we felt [Sabrina] does just what good fiction should do.”

Also on the list is Michael Ondaatje, whose book The English Patient recently won the Golden Book, which was the public poll of the best Man Booker novel of the last 50 years.

“Not for a second do I believe this is the best book on the list, especially when it is placed beside a work by VS Naipaul, one of the masters of our time, or a major work like Wolf Hall,” the author himself said modestly, adding: “I suspect and know more than anyone that perhaps The English Patient is still cloudy, with errors in pacing.”

Crime writer Belinda Bauer's Snap is also on the long-list. “I’d read it even before I knew I would be a Booker judge and it seemed to me to be an outstanding novel,” says Val McDermid. “My fellow judges read it and one said, ‘This transcends genre’, and someone else said, ‘This shows what genre can do at its best’ ...

"It is an extremely clever piece of storytelling with characters you care about, and that’s what we were looking for – something well written that engages with mind and heart.”

The full longlist of 13 novels is as follows: