In this Saturday’s Irish Times, authors and critics reveal their favourite books of the year so far. Irish academic Ronan Lee responds to the Myanmar government’s banning of his book, Myanmar’s Rohingya Genocide: Identity, History and Hate Speech.
Reviews are Seamus Martin on Killer in the Kremlin by John Sweeney; Sally Hayden on Guillaume Blanc’s The Invention of Green Colonialism & Olivier Remaud’s Thinking Like an Iceberg; Declan Burke on the best new crime fiction; Sara Keating on the best new children’s books; Niall Ó Dochartaigh on UDR: Declassified by Micheal Smith; Nicholas Allen on Impermanence, edited by Neil Hegarty and Nora Hickey M’Sichili; Helen Cullen on Lacuna by Fiona Snyckers; Tom Hennigan on Ireland and Argentina in the Twentieth Century by Dermot Keogh; and Niamh Donnelly on Common Decency by Susannah Dickey.
This Saturday’s Irish Times Eason offer is April in Spain by John Banville. You can buy a copy with your newspaper at any Eason store for just €4.99, a saving of €6.
Louise Kennedy has been shortlisted for the inaugural Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize for her debut novel Trespasses, the story of a love affair set during the early years of the Troubles.
Kennedy, a former chef who is originally from Holywood, Co Down and who now lives in Sligo, is one of six authors shortlisted for the prize, which celebrates debut fiction of all forms and is voted for by Waterstones booksellers. The other contenders are Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus; The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty; How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu; Vagabonds! by Eloghosa Osunde; and Memphis by Tara M Stringfellow.
Kennedy said: “I am beyond thrilled that Trespasses is being considered for this incredible new award. That the shortlist has been selected by booksellers is all the more heartening. Trespasses was inspired by my childhood in a town on the shores of Belfast Lough, where my grandmother had a pub. The Laverys, Agnews and McGeowns are from my imagination, but the world they live in is like the one in which I grew up; populated by ordinary people trying to live under the awful shadow of the Troubles.”
Louise Kennedy grew up in Holywood, Co. Down. Her debut short story collection, The End of the Word Is a Cul de Sac, was published last year.
Ellen, from Waterstone Liverpool, said that Trespasses “really gives a detailed and sensory experience of the life of a young woman living in Northern Ireland during the Troubles”, whilst Clare, from Waterstones Farnham, was moved to tears by its “quiet but evocative prose” and Ross, from Waterstones Drogheda, calls it a “gorgeous, simple love story set in an important era”.
Bea Carvalho, Waterstones Head of Fiction, says: “For the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize’s inaugural year our booksellers have chosen an extraordinary shortlist of bold and original new voices. The exceptional quality of submissions signifies a bright and exciting future for fiction, and our six finalists represent the dazzling scope of storytelling talent amongst this new generation of novelists. Taking us from 1970s war-torn Belfast to space-travel via modern Lagos’s spiritual underbelly and the political landscape of contemporary America, this is a truly global shortlist which broadens horizons and challenges genre. United by a generous capacity to find hope, light, and community in the unlikeliest places, they are all timely and important novels by writers of staggering ambition and talent.”
The winner will be announced on August 25th and will receive a prize of £5,000 and the backing of all Waterstones shops and waterstones.com.
Ireland’s longest-running community arts festival returns for its 45th year with cultural riches. Clifden Arts Festival returns bringing with it the community-led spirit and diversity of inspiration that President Michael D Higgins hailed as a “unique and outstanding experience.”
Highlights include Margaret Atwood, the Booker-winning literary giant behind The Handmaid’s Tale. Included in Clifden’s spirit of homage will be events to mark this year’s centenary of James Joyce’s Ulysses including a film by award-winning filmmaker and actor Tristan Heanue, who will premiere a specially commissioned film installation that combines Joyce, the Connemara landscape, and world-renowned screen icon Olwen Fouéré. Not to be missed. Visit clifdenartsfestival.ie
Kenyan writer Idza Luhumyo has been awarded the 2022 AKO Caine Prize for African Writing for her short story Five Years Next Sunday, published in Disruption (Catalyst Press and Short Story Day Africa, 2021). She is the fifth Kenyan writer to win the award after Binyavanga Wainaina (2002), Yvonne Owuor (2003), Okwiri Oduor (2014) and Makena Onjerika (2018).
Okey Ndibe, chair of the judging panel, announced the winner at an award ceremony at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum. calling Luhumyo’s entry “an incandescent story - its exquisite language wedded to the deeply moving drama of a protagonist whose mystical office invites animus at every turn”.
Judging the Prize alongside Ndibe this year were French-Guinean author and academic Elisa Diallo; South African literary curator and co-founder of The Cheeky Natives Letlhogonolo Mokgoroane; UK-based Nigerian visual artist Ade ‘Àsìkò’ Okelarin; Kenyan co-founder of the Book Bunk Angela Wachuka.
Luhumyo takes the £10,000 prize, beating 267 eligible entries in a record year of submissions. She will be published in the 2022 AKO Caine Prize anthology later this year by Cassava Republic Press. Five Years Next Sunday, which won the 2021 Short Story Day Africa Prize, is a story about a young woman with the unique power to call the rain in her hair. Feared by her family and community, a chance encounter with a foreigner changes her fortunes, but there are duplicitous designs upon her most prized and vulnerable possession.
Ndibe said: ‘What we liked about the story was the mystical office of the protagonist, who is both ostracised and yet holds the fate of her community in her hair. She is stripped of agency by her immediate family, as well as the Europeans who give the impression of placing her on a pedestal, yet within that seeming absence of agency, and oppressive world, is her stubborn reclamation of herself. The dramatic tension in the story is so powerful and palpable that it’s like something you could cut with a knife.”
Classroom assistant Suzie Hull, who lives near Markethill, Co Armagh, has won the Romantic Novelists’ Association’s (RNA) annual Joan Hessayon Award for 2022 with her novel, In This Foreign Land.
The award is for authors whose debut novels have gone through the RNA’s New Writers’ Scheme and are subsequently accepted for publication. Sponsored by Dr David Hessayon OBE in honour of his late wife, Joan, who was a novelist, RNA member and supporter of its New Writers’ Scheme, the award showcases a variety of debut novels within the romantic fiction genre.
Hull said: “I was thrilled to be this year’s winner of the Joan Hessayon Award 2022. The standard of my fellow contenders must be the highest ever so to have been chosen out of all of them is a true honour. I want to extend my thanks to the judges - Jean Fullerton, Thorne Ryan and Kate Burke - and I was blown away by their kind words. The New Writers’ Scheme is an exceptional way to nurture talent and I’m looking forward to my future with Orion Dash.’
The judges for this year were Jean Fullerton, RNA Chair; Thorne Ryan, Publishing Director, Avon; and Kate Burke, Senior Agent and Director, Blake Friedmann Literary Agency. Fullerton said: “In This Foreign Land is a powerful debut novel and a must read for any historical fiction fans. It’s an engrossing tale that takes the reader from Edwardian colonial Cairo across to strife-torn Ireland and then to stifling, class-conscious WW1 London. Meticulous in her research, Ms Hull is to be congratulated on delivering such a page-turning and emotionally satisfying novel.’ Ryan said: ‘Suzie Hull’s In This Foreign Land is a sweeping, romantic wartime novel with a refreshing difference. Suzie evokes both the era and the various locations beautifully, especially Egypt, and as I read it I felt truly transported. She pulled on my heartstrings on every page. I couldn’t believe it was a debut, and I think Suzie has a very bright future ahead of her.’
Burke also praised the winning novel. “Suzie’s novel is so evocative with a strong sense of place and time. We all learnt something new about Cairo in this period and felt completely transported there!’
Melissa Oliver, the organiser of the Joan Hessayon Award (and winner of the award in 2020), commented, ‘In this Foreign Land by Susie Hull is a beautifully evocative debut, with incredible attention to historical detail and set against the backdrop of a war that would soon unleash destruction and hardship in its wake. Its sweeping emotive story of love and loss pulled at my heartstrings and I’m glad that the judges were all in agreement when choosing this year’s Joan Hessayon Award winner. Well done Suzie and to all of this year’s amazing contenders.’
The award ceremony was held last Saturday at Harper Adams University, Newport, Shropshire, as part of the RNA’s annual conference.
