Eimear McBride has emerged as the most highly regarded contemporary Irish writer in a Times Literary Supplement survey of 200 or so critics, academics and fiction writers.
They were each asked to name the 10 British and Irish novelists who they considered to be producing the best writing “at the moment”. Ali Smith topped the list, followed by Hilary Mantel, Zadie Smith, Kazuo Ishiguro and then McBride.
Irish writers featured disproportionately in the top 10, with Colm Tóibín, Anne Enright and Sebastian Barry also featuring, alongside Nicola Barker, Alan Hollinghurst and Jon McGregor.
“As befits a literary culture undergoing an apparent renaissance,” writes the TLS’s Alex Clark, “three further Irish writers crop up in the top 20, Kevin Barry, Sally Rooney and Claire-Louise Bennett [the latter, in fact, English-born but Galway-based for several years]. Rooney, the newest kid on the block, was frequently named as a notable omission on this year’s Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction longlist, for her much-praised debut novel, Conversations with Friends. (Other Irish writers put forward by our voters included Sara Baume, Elske Rahill, Colin Barrett and Belinda McKeon.)”
Other Irish writers mentioned in dispatches included Mike McCormack, Anakana Schofield and June Caldwell.
McBride’s debut, A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing, was serially rejected by major publishers until it was picked up by the small independent Galley Beggar Press. It won the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Goldsmiths Prize and the Desmond Elliott Prize – “a sweep notable for the different profiles of each award”, observed Clark. Her second novel, The Lesser Bohemians, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 2017 and has just been shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award.
Nominated authors – in order of total number of nominations
Ali Smith
Hilary Mantel
Zadie Smith
Kazuo Ishiguro
Eimear McBride
Colm Tóibín
Nicola Barker
Alan Hollinghurst
Anne Enright
Sebastian Barry / Jon McGregor
David Szalay
Kevin Barry
Deborah Levy
Tom McCarthy / Sally Rooney
Kamila Shamsie
Claire-Louise Bennett / Rachel Cusk / Gwendoline Riley / Sarah Waters
