Many congratulations to Sebastian Barry, whose novel A Long Long Way has won Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award at the opening of Listowel Writers’ Week.
The novel is about a soldier in the Royal Dublin Fusiliers during the first World War. The same soldier is a ghostly presence in Barry’s drama masterpiece, The Steward of Christendom.
The others on the shortlist were Dermot Bolger’s The Family on Paradise Pier, John Banville’s The Sea, Jennifer Johnston’s Grace and Truth, and Nick Laird’s Utterly Monkey.
A Long, Long Way was shortlisted for the 2005 Man Booker, which of course was won by John Banville’s The Sea.
Let me say once again that they are friends of mine, but hearing Barry and Bolger read from their magnificent novels was for me the highlight of last year’s Dublin Writers’ Festival, and it is wonderful to see two such gifted and versatile writers at the height of their novelistic powers.
Looking down the list, the judges of the Irish Fiction Award, Carlo Gébler and Glenn Patterson, must have had a hellish time deciding on the winner. Rather them than me.
