News that novels by Sebastian Barry, Elaine Feeney, Paul Lynch and Paul Murray are on the longlist for this year’s Booker Prize provides further evidence of the robust health of contemporary Irish literature. The Booker remains the world’s most prestigious and high-profile award for fiction in English, so the fact that almost a quarter of this year’s 13-title list comes from one small country is noteworthy in itself.
But this is no fluke or one-off. Megan Nolan, Naoise Dolan, Donal Ryan, Colin Barrett, Kevin Barry, Mike McCormack, Anna Burns (winner of the 2018 Booker) and many others have all had their work acclaimed in recent years. Colm Tóibín and John Banville are figures of international stature. Sally Rooney is a global phenomenon. And, with eagerly anticipated new works on the way next month from Anne Enright (another Booker-winner) and Claire Keegan, it is clear something remarkable is happening.
Ireland has long been happy to trade on its reputation as a land steeped in literature, with sometimes embarrassing efforts by the State to associate itself with the achievements of great writers of the past, many of whom it had ignored, reviled or exiled during their lifetimes.
Those days are thankfully long gone, but there should be no illusion about how difficult it still is to live as a professional fiction writer. For many, it is a pursuit undertaken in the hours of early morning or late at night, when the business of earning a living or raising a family is done. Enlightened supports from the State have also helped.
In the end, though, it all comes back to the individual writer and the words they choose. Amid the rich sweep of diverse subjects, genres and styles which all these books represent, at their heart is the mysterious, profound, ambiguous, sometimes contradictory relationship that exists between the Irish writer and the English language. As Naoise Dolan told the New York Times this week, “If you’re an Irish person who writes for international publications, you cannot but think constantly about Irish English”.