There was a time, not so long ago – from 1988 to 1994, to be precise – when Republic of Ireland soccer fans grew accustomed to their team qualifying for major tournaments. Sadly, our complacency wore off before the novelty did, as it would be 2002 and then 2012 before we qualified again.

I note this, as a fan of both Irish football and Irish literature, simply to emphasise that we should be wary of ever finding it unremarkable how often Irish authors are turning up on the shortlists and as winners of international literary prizes.

The Desmond Elliott Prize has announced its shortlist of the three books in the running to take home what the Daily Telegraph called the "most prestigious award for first-time novelists", and two of them are Irish: The Glorious Heresies, by Lisa McInerney, and Mrs Engels, by Gavin McCrea, which Irish Times Book Club readers will be familiar with as our books of the month for March and February, respectively. The third book shortlisted is The House at the Edge of the World, by Julia Rochester. Fellow Irish author Sara Baume had also been longlisted for Spill Simmer Falter Wither.

Iain Pears, chairman of the judges, said: “These are hugely ambitious, complex, confident works by three extremely talented writers, and it is wonderful that the Desmond Elliott Prize exists to help them reach the wide audience they so richly deserve. With the demise of the Guardian First Book Award, a prize like this is all the more important to new writers.”

Pears said of Mrs Engels: "McCrea has cleverly included just enough historical detail to set a very evocative scene, then lets his cast tell the story. The writing always surprises, his characters are compelling without having to be likable and, as all of we judges noted, Mrs Engels is perhaps the most feminist novel we read for the prize."

McCrea's citation reads: "The cover of Mrs Engels shows a lady mounted on a zebra, a famously unridable steed. Yet here she poses steady of seat and gaze – truly the axis of this turning world, shrewd observer if shrewish commentator. Around her the circus whirls. Gavin McCrea: ringmaster and recorder of this troupe of theoretical acrobats, social lion tamers and communard clowns, schooled but not subdued into a performance as full of brio as it is free of intellectual snobbery. His is a narrative canvas as eventfully crowded as it is richly meaningful, daring to instruct as it is drawn to please."

Of McInerney, also shortlisted for the Baileys prize and longlisted for the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year, Pears said: “It is no surprise that not one but two major literary prizes have noticed McInerney’s talent. She gives us strong, complex working-class characters with real emotional hinterlands, and plays with the reader’s emotions in an extraordinarily sophisticated way.”

Her citation reads: "The Glorious Heresies: morality tale, diabolical comedy or tragedy of errors? All these and more, for here is ambition unconfined: a many-storied edifice, gritty, witty and wise, linguistically dazzling and metaphorically intoxicating. Lisa McInerney may have graffitied with cacophonous colours the pretty Irish facade, but she has gifted us in its place a symphony in concrete music that sings with internal harmonies."

Rochester has worked for the BBC's Portuguese service and for Amnesty International as researcher on Brazil, but it is the landscape of her Devon childhood that features in The House at the Edge of the World. Pears said: "Rochester's writing is quite wonderful. She is particularly strong on her sense of place. She brings the landscape to life just as she does her characters. We all felt we were with them at key points in the book."

The prize, named after the late Irish publisher and literary agent Desmond Elliott, was won last year by Claire Fuller and in 2014 by Eimear McBride. The winner will be revealed on June 22nd.