Just one Irish author - Mary Costello - has made the shortlist for this year's International Dublin Literary Award, formerly the IMPAC. The award is worth €100,000, the world's largest prize for a single novel published in English.
Apart from Costello's emigrant story Academy Street, nine other novels have made it on to the shortlist from countries including Jamaica, Rwanda and the US. The shortlist contains a number of slim, although not necessarily light novels and one 'Big Beast' of a read - Man Booker Prize winner Marlon James' A Brief History of Seven Killings.
Ten novels have made the shortlist for this year's Dublin Literary Award
A number of the novels are in translation and all are available to borrow free of charge from Dublin City Libraries. The award is sponsored by Dublin City Council and the winner will be announced by the Lord Mayor on June 9.
RTÉ's Arts and Media Correspondent, Sinéad Crowley, has taken a look at the shortlist and selected her personal highlights.
My Top Three:
Department of Speculation: Jenny Offill
This was my favourite of the 2016 selection. The story of a marriage, it's a stunning gut-punch of a novel told in evocative vignettes. You could read this book in a day but you'll be thinking about it for much longer.
Your Fathers, Where are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?: Dave Eggers
I loved this book; it's another short novel but gives the reader plenty to discuss. A man has kidnapped a number of people, including a NASA astronaut, and is holding them captive in an abandoned military base. Eggers uses this as a jumping off point to explore a number of aspects of modern American society. There is plenty of humour here, too, despite the weighty themes.
Academy Street: Mary Costello
The only Irish novel on the shortlist this year, this is a very enjoyable and thought-provoking read. The novel opens as Tess Lohan is coming to terms with the death of her young mother, then picks up her story some years later - 1962 - when she emigrates to New York City. Given the theme of emigration, and the efforts made by a young woman to build a life far from home, there are certainly similarities to books like Brooklyn, but Costello has a style all her own.
The best of the rest…
Marilynne Robinson: Lila
Previously shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, this is the third in a series of books based in the fictional area of Gilead, Iowa. The book tells the story of a woman raised in poverty who marries an older man and achieves, for the first time, a sense of belonging, as well as unexpected affection. This is incredibly atmospheric and beautifully written, almost painterly in parts.
The End of Days: Jenny Erpenbeck
This book, which won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2015, explores aspects of the last century through the various lives of one woman and asks what would have happened if events had gone a certain way. It's similar in theme to Kate Atkinson's superb Life after Life although written in a very different style - if Life after Life is the blockbuster then this is the arthouse cinema version.
Our Lady of the Nile: Scholastique Mukasonga
This powerful novel is set in an elite Catholic boarding school for girls at the edge of the Nile in Rwanda. The book is set before the Rwandan genocide but uses the micro society of the school to show how tensions between the Hutus and the Tutsis are beginning to take hold. This precise novel uses the familiar concept of the school story to present the terrifying reality of life in the outside world.
Family Life: Akhil Sharma
A family emigrate from India to the United States in 1978, but instead of the America Dream they were expecting, they are plunged into tragedy. Told through the eyes of the younger brother, this book is not as dark as its subject matter might initially suggest and the story is told with great warmth.
Diary of the Fall: Michel Laub
This precisely written, evocative novel tells the story of three generations of men and the events, including the Holocaust, that shaped them - and in some cases haunted their lives.
Outlaws: Javier Cercas
A young Spanish boy gets caught up with a teenage criminal gang and, years later, is asked to help out an old friend.
A Brief History of Seven Killings: Marlon James
Winner of the Man Booker Prize, at over 680 pages this is by far the longest book on the shortlist and in many ways the most challenging to read. The book tells, from a number of viewpoints, the story of an attack on Bob Marley in 1976 and its aftermath. Not an easy story but incredibly well-crafted and presented.
Sinéad Crowley
