Just six novels have been shortlisted for this year's lucrative Dublin International Literary Award, and some will already be familiar to readers.
A number of the books have already won other major prizes including the Booker Prize winner Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo and The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead, which won the Pulitizer Prize for Fiction in 2020. To my mind, either of these two would also be worthy winners of the Dublin Award.
Girl, Woman, Other is an engaging, inventive and very timely look at issues of gender and race in contemporary Britain, while The Nickel Boys, which tells the stories of boys at a reform school in 1960s America has been widely praised in the US for the light it throws on what was a repressive and often brutal regime. Although this book is firmly set in a specific time and place in the US, Irish readers will, sadly, find much to identify with in stories of children separated from their families and incarcerated, often for minor or fabricated crimes. It’s a relatively short book with a dual narrative and a final revelation that will leave the reader extremely moved.
In fact this year’s shortlist features many stories either inspired by or directly based on true life incidents. Apeirogon by the Irish writer Colum McCann is the story of two fathers, one Israeli and one Palestinian who both lose children to the conflict in the region and end up working together to promote peace. McCann uses a circular, literary form of storytelling to shape the novel, reminding the reader that the conflict itself is a difficult one to understand in a linear way.
The Lost Children Archive by Valerie Luiselli is the absorbing story of an artistic couple travelling across the US with their children. The family’s personal story is interspersed with tales of other children, detained while trying to cross the border in the US. Although a little too long, this is an absorbing, beautifully written book.
Ocean Vuong is a Vietnamese American poet and his first novel, On Earth, We’re Briefly Gorgeous is his first novel, draws from his own family history and experiences. Written in the form of a letter to his mother, the book looks at issues of conflict, immigration, family and sexuality. In places I found the style and language overly ambitious but it’s an important story, inventively told.
Finally, Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor is a novel in translation which looks at the death of a woman in rural Mexico, known locally as a witch, and uses this crime to explore wider issues of violence against women. It’s richly written and merciless in its excavation of a brutal society. Not an easy read, but an absorbing one.
All of the shortlisted books can be borrowed from libraries nationwide and, while libraries are closed, can be downloaded on the Borrowbox app.
