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Akhil Sharma has won the International Dublin Literary Award 2016 (photo credit Jack Llewellyn Karski)

Akhil Sharma wins €100,000 Dublin Literary Award

Akhil Sharma has won this year's €100,000 International Dublin Literary Award, formerly the IMPAC, for his novel Family Life and he has good cause to celebrate after he admitted today that the book took a remarkable thirteen years to complete

Entertainment • 10 Jun 16

Author Lisa McInerney 'stunned' by Bailey's Prize win

The winner of the 2016 Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction, Lisa McInerney, has said she is "completely stunned" by her win and has praised the "great celebration of diverse voices" recognised by the awards.

Entertainment • 09 Jun 16

Andy Beckett - no rose-tinted stuff in an incisive, clear-eyed account.

Andy Beckett – Promised You a Miracle (UK 1980-82)

Andy Beckett offered us illuminating social history in his previous books When the Lights Went Out and Pinochet in Picadilly. Promised You a Miracle looks at Thatcherism as it rolls up its sleeves.

Book Reviews • 19 Aug 16

Lisa McInerney features on the Baileys Women's Prize shortlist for her debut novel

Author Lisa McInerney on Bailey's Prize Nomination

Lisa McInerney's novel The Glorious Heresies has been shortlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction 2016, the winner of which will be announced tonight. Paddy Kehoe caught up with the author to discuss her acclaimed debut.

Entertainment • 08 Jun 16

Judi Dench and Jeremy Irons in The TV film Langrishe Go Down, based on the eponymous Aidan Higgins novel

Aidan Higgins radio doc airs Bank Holiday Monday

The celebrated Irish author Aidan Higgins died at the age of 88, in Kinsale, on Sunday December 27 2015. A new documentary on his life and work entitled Aidan Higgins: The Reach of Words airs tomorrow (Monday) evening on RTÉ Radio 1.

Entertainment • 05 Jun 16

Penguin are issuing the entire series of Maigret novels - My Friend Maigret has just appeared, another taut Simenon tale from the Belgian master of crime.

Georges Simenon - My Friend Maigret

Georges Simenon, the Belgian master of crime fiction, wrote 75 Maigret novels and 28 Maigret short stories and Penguin Classics have been issuing new translations of the novels and stories. My Friend Maigret and Maigret’s Dead Man were published recently.

Book Reviews • 19 Aug 16

Claudia Carroll - All She Ever Wished For - a beach fave this summer.

Luiz Eduardo Soares - Rio de Janeiro Extreme City

Luiz Eduardo Soares is a carioca - Rio, born and bred - a political scientist and activist who was briefly national security chief. He is well-placed to tell the story of a complex city as the Olympic Games gather pace.

Book Reviews • 19 Aug 16

Rebel Sisters - the fascinating life stories of Muriel, Nellie and Grace Gifford set against the dramatic years as Easter 1916 looms

Marita Conlon-McKenna - Rebel Sisters

The dramatic life stories of Muriel, Nellie and Grace Gifford are told in Marita Conlon-McKenna's latest novel, Rebel Sisters, set against the backdrop of the 1916 Rising. Avril Hoare has been reading the story, which is already an Irish best-seller.

Book Reviews • 19 Aug 16

Murray - Honoured for The Mark and the Void

Irish author Paul Murray shares Wodehouse Prize

Irish author Paul Murray and British writer Hannah Rothschild have been announced as joint winners of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for comic fiction.

Entertainment • 25 May 16

Witty, engaging romp through 1930s Paris and the work and doings of its daring philosophers

Sarah Bakewell – At the Existentialist Café

Sarah Bakewell’s account of the meeting of Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and Raymond Aron at the Bec-de-Gaz bar on Rue Monparnasse in 1932 makes for an entertaining read, wittily knowing and irreverent by turns.

Book • 19 Aug 16

Macdara Woods: a certain Beat sensibility gives glorious uplift to his new collection.

Macdara Woods - Music from the Big Tent

Macdara Woods (born 1942) may be one of the last poets alive in this country to be able to write that he read the Satyricon in French in Paris four decades ago - long may he read the Satyricon.

Book Reviews • 19 Aug 16

Chinese thinking for now. The Path is a new book on how we can use wisdom aired 2000 years ago.

Michael Puett and Christine Gross-Loh - The Path

Professor Michael Puett’s course in Chinese philosophy is the third most popular course in Harvard, after introductory economics and computer Science. In The Path, Puett and Christine Gross-Loh - who has taught Chinese philosophy - help us think again.

Book Reviews • 19 Aug 16

Ireland 100 launches in Washington DC

Ireland 100, a three-week festival of Irish arts and culture, was launched in Washington DC on Tuesday night, as part of US commemorations of the 1916 Rising.

Entertainment • 17 May 16

Winning formula - Han Kang and her translator Deborah Smith, winners of the Man Booker International prize 2016

South Korea's Han Kang wins Man Booker International

South Korean author Han Kang and her translator Deborah Smith have won the Man Booker International prize 2016 with The Vegetarian.

Entertainment • 17 May 16

Garth Greenwell's debut is an utterly absorbing story set in contemporary Bulgaria.

Garth Greenwell - What Belongs to You

Garth Greenwell’s What Belongs to You must be without question one of the greatest American novels of recent times. Formally cool and elegant, yet highly charged, the story details a troubled but passionate relationship in contemporary Bulgaria.

Book Reviews • 19 Aug 16

Chris Cleave: Rick O'Shea's guest on May 24 at Dubray Books, Grafton Street in Dublin

Rick O'Shea to interview best-selling author

RTÉ Radio One Poetry Programme presenter and book club guru Rick O'Shea will conduct a public interview with best-selling writer Chris Cleave in Dublin later this May.

Book • 11 May 16

Mark Haddon: a circus of disparate characters in dramatic situations, from ancient Greek myth to a futuristic Martian scenario and the in-between extraordinary.

Mark Haddon - The Pier Falls

Mark Haddon will be familiar to many readers world-wide for his best-selling novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. His new collection of short stories displays the work of a vivid imagination that sets no bounds to where it flies.

Book Reviews • 19 Aug 16

Taut, vivid, engrossing stories from David Park.

David Park – Gods & Angels

David Park's penultimate novel, the masterful The Light of Amsterdam was short-listed for the 2014 International IMPAC Prize. His absorbing new short stories range from his native Northern Ireland to Spain and Scandinavia.

Book Reviews • 19 Aug 16

Cecelia Ahern's new novel centres on Celestine whose moral compass will not let her join the finger-pointers

Cecelia Ahern - Flawed

Set in the near future following a banking collapse and a broken economy, Flawed is Cecilia Ahern's first novel for Young Adults. Avril Hoare can't wait for the sequel

Book Reviews • 19 Aug 16

Mostly Irish settings for the splendid new work collected here, although Colm Tóibín's protagonist is German and the story is set in Germany.

Granta - New Irish Writing

Granta is the highly-regarded UK-based periodical which highlights vibrant new writing, often under select themes in individual editions. Now comes our turn, with new Irish writing from Kevin Barry, Emma Donoghue, Colm Tóibín, Roddy Doyle.

Book Reviews • 19 Aug 16

The Italians - a gently acerbic yet affectionate survey by one who has been immersed in matters Italian for 15 years.

John Hooper - The Italians

John Hooper's lively 300-page account is the result of 15 years immersion in all things Italian. The veteran journalist goes behind the headline names - Mussolini, Berlusconi, the Amanda Knox trial, with Fellini and football and feminism also surveyed.

Book Reviews • 19 Aug 16

The new Greek poetry - there are political poems but the anthology draws on diverse cultural sources

Austerity Measures - The New Greek Poetry

Yanis Varoufakis urges us all to read this book of contemporary Greek poetry, but it is far from being a series of diatribes against austerity or anything related. Indeed it shows Greece to be a country still assimilating diverse voices and cultures.

Book Reviews • 19 Aug 16

Deborah Levy does amused sympathy for our human foibles with style and an almost surreal imaginative touch in Hot Milk.

Deborah Levy - Hot Milk

A twenty-something girl, of Greek and English parentage, has accompanied her hypochondriac mother to an expensive clinic in the South of Spain. However, she must face healing herself before her life shatters, in this masterful comedy of manners.

Book Reviews • 19 Aug 16

Best-selling novelist Mark Haddon: new stories due May 5

Mark Haddon: "too many beige short stories"

"I have read too many beige short stories in my life, " says Mark Haddon, author of the best-selling The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time as he launches his new collection of short stories.

Entertainment • 23 Apr 16

Book

Akhil Sharma wins €100,000 Dublin Literary Award

Author Lisa McInerney 'stunned' by Bailey's Prize win

Andy Beckett – Promised You a Miracle (UK 1980-82)

Author Lisa McInerney on Bailey's Prize Nomination

Aidan Higgins radio doc airs Bank Holiday Monday

Georges Simenon - My Friend Maigret

Top Summer reads to unwrap and enjoy

Luiz Eduardo Soares - Rio de Janeiro Extreme City

Marita Conlon-McKenna - Rebel Sisters

Irish author Paul Murray shares Wodehouse Prize

Sarah Bakewell – At the Existentialist Café

Macdara Woods - Music from the Big Tent

Michael Puett and Christine Gross-Loh - The Path

Ireland 100 launches in Washington DC

South Korea's Han Kang wins Man Booker International

Garth Greenwell - What Belongs to You

Rick O'Shea to interview best-selling author

Mark Haddon - The Pier Falls

David Park – Gods & Angels

Cecelia Ahern - Flawed

Granta - New Irish Writing

John Hooper - The Italians

Austerity Measures - The New Greek Poetry

Deborah Levy - Hot Milk

Mark Haddon: "too many beige short stories"