Irish literature continues to go from strength to strength. Earlier this year, I put a call out on social media to publicists working with both Irish writers and huge unmissable books coming in 2025. The postman's head’s been away with delivering proofs, but I’ve been revelling in reading each book that landed through the letterbox. The range of publishing from writers across the island is astounding, from magical realism to memoir.
I’ve pulled together a list of the prose titles that we’re sure to be seeing on prize lists and bestseller charts next year.
Roisin O’Donnell – Nesting
Nesting is O’Donnell’s debut novel, and follow-up to her short story collection Wild Quiet. If you’ve been online at all, you’ll have seen the hype for this one. Trust the hype. It’s a life-affirming story about one woman trying to leave her marriage and start over. On a bright spring afternoon in Dublin, Ciara Fay makes a split-second decision. Head spinning, all she knows for certain is that home is no longer safe. It was meant to be an escape. But with dwindling savings, no job, and her family across the sea, Ciara must find a way to reinvent herself, her life. This is a novel you’ll not be able to put down. (Scribner, January)
Gráinne O’Hare – Thirst Trap
Belfast writer Gráinne O’Hare’s debut novel is bursting at the seams with heart, joy, and humour. Maggie, Harley and Róise are friends on the brink: of triumph, catastrophe, or maybe just finally growing up. Their crumbling Belfast house-share has been witness to their roaring twenties, filled with questionable one-night stands and ruthless hangovers. But now fault-lines are beginning to show. The three girls are still grieving the tragic death of their friend, Lydia, whose room remains untouched. Their last big fight hangs heavy over their heads, unspoken since the accident. And now they are all beginning to unravel. Thirst Trap is breathtaking. It’s one of those novels that you can’t believe is a debut. O’Hare is a writer to watch out for in 2025 and beyond (Picador, June)
Claire-Lise Kieffer – Tenterhooks
The stories in Tenterhooks do as the title suggests: keep the reader on the edge of their seat. Claire-Lise Kieffer's debut is a collection of compulsive, addictive, page-turning stories that are equal parts eerie and humorous. In one, Galway City slowly begins to submerge underwater, while in another an exorcism is sought. Perfection (Banshee Press, February)
Roisin Lanigan – I Want To Go Home But I'm Already There
Another house-share nightmare from a Belfast author, I Want to Go Home But I’m Already There is funny, sharp, and terrifyingly relatable. Lanigan’s debut novel is a ghost story set in the rental crisis. The longer Áine spends inside her rented flat - pretending to work from home; dissecting messages from the friends whose lives seem to have moved on without her - the less it feels like home. And as Áine fixates on the cracks in the ceiling, it becomes harder to ignore the cracks in her relationship with Elliott (Figtree, March)
Two brilliant novels coming out next year pic.twitter.com/wdSpZXyqM3
— Colin Barrett (@ColinBarrett82) November 26, 2024
John Patrick McHugh – Fun and Games
John Patrick McHugh’s debut novel is a follow up to a critically acclaimed short story collection Pure Gold. Fun and Games is blisteringly tender, while being sharp in its observations on class, love, and coming of age. Seventeen-year-old John Masterson has no idea what he wants. It’s his last summer on the small island where he has grown up and he should be enjoying the weeks until his exam results come through. Instead, he’s working mind-numbing shifts at the local hotel. He can almost pretend that this summer will last forever. But soon John must face up to the choices before him: to stay or leave, to stand out or fit in, and whether to love and let himself be loved, despite or perhaps because of, the flaws that make us all human (Fourth Estate, April)
Gethan Dick – Water in the Desert Fire in the Night
Water in the Desert Fire in the Night is a novel about mothering, post-apocalyptic feminism, gold, hunger and hope. An underachieving millennial, a retired midwife and an Irishman set out from London after the end of the world to cycle to a sanctuary in the southern Alps. It’s about the fact that the world ends all the time - and what to try to do next (Tramp Press, May)
New releases from your favourite writers
Eimear McBride – The City Changes Its Face
Social media lit up when The City Changes Its Face was announced earlier this year. It’s hotly anticipated by both critics and readers alike. A rainy Camden night, December 1996. 20-year-old Eily and 40-year-old Stephen retrace the course of their two-year love affair in search of what's gone wrong. Is it Stephen's reconnection with his long-lost teenage daughter, Grace? Or that he's a well-known actor while Eily's still at drama school? Maybe the autobiographical film he's just made has brought his old demons back to the surface? Or perhaps Eily's youth has led her into a mistake she doesn't know how to fix? (Faber, February)
Sean Hewitt – Open, Heaven
Hewitt's work spans from academic monographs on J.M. Synge to memoir to poetry collections, and in 2025 he expands his talents to novels too, with his debut Open, Heaven. On the cusp of adulthood, Open, Heaven’s protagonist James dreams of another life far away from his small village. Beholden to the expectations of home and family, his burgeoning desire – an ache for autonomy, tenderness and sex – threatens to unravel his shy exterior. Then he meets Luke. As the seasons pass, and the pair form an ever-changing bond, James falls into a terrifying first love that will transform his life forever. Beautiful and tender, this is bound to be a reader favourite for 2025 (Vintage, April)
So, so delighted to share the cover for Open, Heaven, my debut novel.
— Seán Hewitt (@seanehewitt) November 22, 2024
Publishing April 2025. You can pre-order from your favourite bookshop, and even grab yourself a signed edition, here:https://t.co/ijhWfBjSSN@JonathanCape @PenguinUKBooks @PenguinIEBooks pic.twitter.com/GFMNHb2MHb
Tim MacGabhann – The Black Pool: The Memoir of Forgetting
MacGabhann is the writer of novels Call Him Mine and How to be Nowhere and the poetry collection Rory Gallagher – LIVE! – From the Hotel of the Dead. Following an obsessive mind trying (and failing) to find relief, The Black Pool is a gripping thrill-ride through violent, chaotic underworlds, showing us what happens when everything falls apart. It shows us rock bottom and the start of the journey to recovery from there. It's a memoir shot full of holes and shocking clarities. Towards the end, it achieves something like serenity - something like recovery. This memoir is unflinchingly honest, heart-wrenching and life-affirming (Sceptre, May)
Wendy Erskine – The Benefactors
Wendy Erskine is one of Ireland’s best loved short story writers, with her critically acclaimed collections Sweet Home and Dance Move, and soon to be one of our best novelists too. In The Benefactors we meet Frankie, Miriam and Bronagh - very different women but all mothers to 18-year-old boys. Glamorous Frankie, now married to a wealthy, older man, grew up in care. Miriam has recently lost her beloved husband Kahlil in ambiguous circumstances. Bronagh, the CEO of a children's services charity, loves the celebrity and prestige this brings her. They do not know each other yet, but when their sons are accused of sexually assaulting Misty Johnston, whose family lacks the wealth and social-standing of their own, they'll leverage all the power of their position to protect their children (Sceptre, June)
Jan Carson – Few and Far Between
Arguably the island’s most prolific writer with a mind like no other, Jan Carson’s writing is astounding. Few and Far Between is the EU Prize for Literature recipient’s ninth book. In 1958 soon-to-be Northern Irish Prime Minister Terrence O’Neill proposed draining Lough Neagh, in order to create a seventh county for the North. In Few and Far Between, Belfast-based writer Carson’s fourth novel, she imagines an alternative history in which O’Neill’s drainage scheme proceeds, exposing an archipelago of tiny islands in the middle of Lough Neagh, (which really exist). The Neagh Archipelago provides sanctuary for dozens of individuals intimidated out of their homes during the "Troubles," and at first becomes a kind of haven for people who want to love a different life, who don’t fit in on the mainland (Doubleday, July)
