Noel O’Regan on James Tait Black shortlist

In The Irish Times this Saturday, Chimene Suleyman, author of The Chain, tells Rosita Boland about discovering that the man who got her pregnant had been impregnating lots of other women; Aoife Barry explores the world of silent book clubs. Anna Fitzgerald tells Niamh Donnelly about her debut novel, Girl in the Making; and there is a Q&A with Edel Coffey about her career and latest novel, In Her Place.

Reviews are Huw Bennett on Does Counter-Terrorism Work? by Richard English; Michael Foley on Adventures in Democracy: The Turbulent World of People Power by Erica Benner; Helen Cullen on The Best Way to Bury Your Husband Alexia Casale; Catherine Taylor on the best new fiction in translation; Seamus Martin on Michael Kimmage’s Collisions: The Origins of the War in Ukraine and the New Global Instability; Mei Chin on Until August by Gabriel García Márquez; Eamonn Sweeney on What Ireland Can Teach the World About Music by Toner Quinn; Mia Levitin on Reading Genesis by Marilynne Robinson; Brian Dillon on Lucy Sante I Heard Her Call My Name: A Memoir of Transition; and Sarah Gilmartin on Girl in the Making by Anna Fitzgerald.

This weekend’s Irish Times Eason book offer is Strange Sally Diamond by Liz Nugent. You can buy the best-selling author’s award-winning novel for just €5.99, a €5 saving.

Kerry author Noel O’Regan is one of only four writers shortlisted for this year’s James Tait Black fiction prize, worth £10,000 to the winner.

O’Regan’s debut novel Though the Bodies Fall, published last year by Granta, explores the huge personal cost of a young man’s obligation to continue his mother’s mission to save the lives of would-be suicides at their clifftop home.

The other novels shortlisted are: Lori and Joe by Amy Arnold (Prototype Publishing); Open Throat by Henry Hoke (Macmillan Publishers); and Praiseworthy by Alexis Wright (And Other Stories). The latter was also shortlisted this week for the €100,000 Dublin Literary Award.

The awards – presented by Edinburgh University since 1919 – are the only big British book prizes judged by literature scholars and students.

The six biographies shortlisted for the £10,000 prize are: This Is Not Miami by Fernanda Melchor, translated by Sophie Hughes (Fitzcarraldo Editions); Traces of Enayat by Iman Mersal, translated by Robin Moger (And Other Stories); Fassbinder Thousands of Mirrors by Ian Penman (Fitzcarraldo Editions); Ordinary Notes by Christina Sharpe (Daunt Books Publishing); Always Reaching: The Selected Writings of Anne Truitt by Anne Truitt (Yale University Press); and Lifescapes by Anne Wroe (Penguin).

The shortlists will be reread, annotated, and discussed by students and scholars to decide the winners of both the prizes, which will be announced by the University of Edinburgh in May.

Close to Home by Belfast author Michael Magee has made the Authors’ Club shortlist for the 2024 Best First Novel Award, now in its 70th year. The judges called the novel, which has already won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature and Nero prize for debut fiction, “a compelling exploration of masculinity, and a richly detailed portrait of Belfast that fizzes with energy. A superb debut.”

The other shortlisted titles are: One Small Voice by Santanu Bhattacharya; The New Life by Tom Crewe; Fire Rush by Jacqueline Crooks; Pearl by Sian Hughes; and All the Little Bird-Hearts by Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow.

Lucy Popescu, chairing the judging panel, commented: “We are thrilled to announce our shortlist of six outstanding debuts. These brilliant novelists tackle complex themes including religious violence and trauma, masculinity and male desire, neurodiversity, love and loss. There are intense explorations of belonging and identity as well as rich evocations of time and place.”

The winning novel will be selected by this year’s guest adjudicator, journalist and broadcaster Samira Ahmed, and announced at a dinner at the National Liberal Club in London on May 22nd.

The Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction – the inaugural international celebration of women’s non-fiction writing – has revealed the shortlist for its 2024 prize: Thunderclap: A Memoir of Art and Life and Sudden Death by Laura Cumming; Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World by Naomi Klein; A Flat Place by Noreen Masud; All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family by Tiya Miles; Code Dependent: Living in the Shadow of AI by Madhumita Murgia; and How to Say Babylon: A Jamaican Memoir by Safiya Sinclair.

The six books cover a broad range of subjects: from life writing, religion, art and history, to AI, social media and online politics. What unites them, the judges said, is an originality of voice and an ability to turn complex ideas and personal trauma into inventive, compelling and immersive prose.

Prof Suzannah Lipscomb, chair of judges, said: “Our magnificent shortlist is made up of six powerful, impressive books that are characterised by the brilliance and beauty of their writing and which each offer a unique, original perspective. The readers of these books will never see the world – be it through art, history, landscape, politics, religion or technology – the same again.”

Sabrin Hasbun has won the inaugural Footnote x Counterpoints Writing Prize for writers from refugee and migrant backgrounds.

Hasbun is a Palestinian-Italian transnational writer and lecturer, currently teaching creative writing for activism and decolonisation at Cardiff Metropolitan University. Her submission, entitled Wait for Her, is a memoir-family saga which retraces the love story between her Palestinian father and her Italian mother.

Simon Weisz was awarded second place for his book Resolution, followed by Roxana Shirazi for Dead Iranian Girl. The winner and runners-up were selected by a judging panel comprising Elif Shafak, Dina Nayeri and Philippe Sands.

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Five years after the novel’s release, A Conspiracy of Lies by Frank Connolly is now available as an audiobook, narrated primarily by Stephen Rea, alongside Liadh Connolly and Eoin Lynam.

“It is a privilege to work with such a professional as Stephen; I think his voice really brings this political thriller to life.” Connolly said. “He read A Conspiracy of Lies before he launched it in 2019. He offered to read it then for an audiobook; we decided that it would more be appropriate to release it in May 2024 to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings.”

Christy Moore praised A Conspiracy of Lies as “An essential and disturbing novel that describes the bombing of Dublin 50 years ago with insights into the ensuing cover-up”. Theo Dorgan called it “a tender love story of two young Dubliners trying to survive the danger of the terrible political truths they uncover”.

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Two Colombian writers are taking part in the International Literature Festival Dublin in May. Margarita García Robayo, whose most recent novel (translated into English) is The Delivery, will be in conversation with Mike McCormack on May 25th. Velia Vidal will also be participating in the festival, in conversation with Cathy Sweeney about her debut novel Tidal Waters (out in English in May). Velia is originally from Chocó, has also written for children and is founder of Motete, an organisation that promotes reading and literacy, as well as Chocó's culture.

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This June, a cast of some of these islands’ finest actors will feature in a new, all-woman, film interpretation of a literary masterpiece. Dame Harriet Walter, Fiona Shaw, Cush Jumbo, Imelda Staunton, Siobhán McSweeney and Miriam Margolyes are each performing in The Molly Films as part of The YES Festival (June 13th-16th), an international celebration of women’s creativity, inspired by James Joyce’s most famous woman character, Molly Bloom, from his novel Ulysses. To book and for more information, please visit: yesderry.com

Each year, on June 16th, the day on which Ulysses is set, Bloomsday celebrations take place in Dublin and across the world, with readings, performances and any amount of costumed revellers hailing Joyce and the book’s central character, Leopold Bloom. This year, in Derry and north Donegal, it will become Molly Bloomsday for the first time, as artists and audiences gather in celebration of the character inspired by James Joyce’s wife, Nora Barnacle, and to provide a rare all-woman exploration of Joyce’s work.

In The Molly Films, each actress will take one of the eight mammoth ‘sentences’ which form the closing episode of Ulysses, Episode 18 (Penelope), more famously known as Molly’s Soliloquy. Molly’s long-and-winding stream of consciousness begins and ends with the word ‘yes’, which prompted festival organisers to bring Joyce’s Dublin-based story north to Derry, as ‘yes’ is used as a greeting there, a colloquial form of ‘hello’.

The YES Festival will also feature ‘No Ordinary Women’, a series of interviews and conversations between women on issues affecting all of us today. Among the line-up are former Irish President Mary Robinson, European Commissioner Mairead McGuinness and human rights activist Baroness Shami Chakrabarti.

The Yes Festival marks the culmination of the ULYSSES European Odyssey 2022-2024, an unprecedented international project which, since 2022, has seen artists, writers, historians and performers gathering in 18 European cities; each city has hosted and created an ‘episode’ exploring contemporary issues, from migration to the environment and disability to global data, with Joyce’s epic novel as the starting point. The 18 participating cities are: Athens, Trieste, Vilnius, Budapest, Marseilles, Paris, Berlin, Lugo, Copenhagen, Istanbul, Cluj, Zurich, Leeuwarden, Eleusis, Oulu, Lisbon, Dublin and Derry.

Episode 16 of the journey will take place in Lisbon (June 8th-16th), where the focus will be on Europe’s ageing population, inspired by the generation gap between Bloom and Stephen in Ulysses. The penultimate episode of the journey (no. 17) will take place in Dublin (June 8th-11th), taking in such venues as the Museum of Literature Ireland and Trinity College Dublin, before attention turns to Derry and north Donegal for episode 18, the YES Festival.