Over the coming weeks, RTÉ TEN will reveal the exciting new fiction on the way in 2015. Here are five to be going on with.
The Lives Of Women - Christine Dwyer Hickey
Twice winner of the Listowel Writers’ Week short story competition and a winner of the Observer/Penguin short story award, Christine Dwyer Hickey is already an established presence on the Irish scene.
First published ten years ago, her novel Tatty was chosen as one of the 50 Irish Books of the Decade, nominated for the Orange Prize and shortlisted for the Hughes & Hughes Irish Novel of the Year Award. The Arabic translation of Tatty is due shortly from Sefsafa Books.
The Cold Eye of Heaven (2011) won the Irish Novel of the Year 2012 and was nominated for the IMPAC 2013 award. It has recently been optioned by Newgrange Films.
Her 2009 novel Last Train from Liguria was nominated for the Prix L’Européen de Littérature. In March 2014 her first play, Snow Angels, debuted at the Project Arts Centre in Dublin in association with Rough Magic. Snow Angels will be published by New Island in February 2015.
Details about her new novel are sketchy as yet, but The Lives Of Women lifts the lid on so called ‘respectable’ Irish suburban life. Atlantic will publish the novel in April.
The Green Road - Anne Enright
Another Irish author, Anne Enright won the Man Booker Prize for her novel, The Gathering, in 2007. That was one story about an irish family, with its joys and heartache. Spanning thirty years and three continents, the author's latest novel tells the story of Rosaleen, matriarch of the Madigan family, and her four children. When Christmas Day reunites the children under one roof, each confronts the terrible weight of family ties and the journey that brought them home. The Green Road will be published by Jonathan Cape in May.
The Illuminations - Andrew O’Hagan
How much do we keep from the people we love? Why is the truth so often buried in secrets? Can we learn from the past or must we forget it? Nobody remembers her now but in her youth Anne Quirke was a pioneer of British documentary photography. Her beloved grandson, Luke is by now a captain with the royal Western Fusiliers. When Luke returns home to Scotland from a tour of duty in Afghanistan Anne’s secret story begin to emerge, along with his. They set out together for an old guest house in Blackpool where she once kept a room. The Illuminations - which is Andrew O’Hagan’s fifth novel - will be published in February by Faber & Faber.
The Discreet Hero - Mario Vargas Llosa
New novel from the veteran Peruvian writer, memoirist and Nobel Prize laureate. We are introduced to Felicito Yanaque who has raised himself from poverty to ownership of a trucking business. His two sons work for him. One day he receives a threatening letter demanding protection money, but the police don’t take him seriously. Felicito refuses to pay up, and despite his perilous situation, he becomes a reluctant public hero. When his mistress is kidnapped, matters become seriously complicated. Ultimately he finds that his troubles have in fact begun very close to home. Faber & Faber, March
The Buried Giant - Kazuo Ishiguro
Kazuo Ishiguro is the author of Never Let Me Go and the Booker Prize-winning, The Remains of the Day, both of which novels were made into highly- successful films. In his new novel, the Romans have long since departed, and Britain is steadily declining into ruin, although the wars that once ravaged the country have ceased. The story begins as a couple, Axl and Beatrice, set off across a troubled land of mist and rain in the hope of finding a son they have not seen for years.
They expect to face many hazards - some strange and other-worldly - but they cannot yet foresee how their journey will reveal to them dark and forgotten corners of their love for one another. Earlier this year, Kazuo Ishiguro revealed that he tore up first draft of The Buried Giant after his wife Lorna MacDougall told him 'this will not do.' Faber & Faber, March.
