Dublin Literary Award 2024
Dublin Literary Award 2024 shortlist in DCU Library
It's an award that is close to our hearts as nominations are submitted by libraries in major cities throughout the world. The award is sponsored by Dublin City Council and administered by Dublin City Libraries. At €100,000 it is the world’s most valuable annual prize for a single work of fiction published in English. If the book has been translated the author receives €75,000 and the translator receives €25,000.
The six shortlisted titles are now available to borrow from DCU Library. The print editions of the titles can be found on display shelves by the stairs on the ground floor of both Cregan Library and O'Reilly Library. Three of the six titles are also available as ebooks.
Read more about each title below and click on the link under each title description to check its availability in DCU Library. You will get the option to reserve the book in Library Search if all print copies are out on loan. Three of the titles are also available as ebooks, to learn more watch our video about how to find and access ebooks.
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Old God's Time by Sebastian Barry
Retired policeman Tom Kettle's peace is interrupted when two former colleagues turn up to ask about a traumatic, decades-old case. A case that Tom never came to terms with. His peace is further disturbed by a young mother who asks for his help. And what of Tom’s wife, June, and their two children? A beautiful, haunting novel, Old God’s Time is about what we live through, what we live with, and what will survive of us.
Check availability in Cregan Library and O'Reilly Library or as an ebook
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Solenoid by Mircea Cărtărescu
Solenoid begins with the mundane details of a diarist’s life and spirals into a philosophical account of life, history, philosophy, and mathematics. The novel is grounded in the reality of late 1970s/early 1980s Communist Romania and combines fiction with autobiography and history. Solenoid explores the exchanges possible between the alternate dimensions of life and art within the Communist present.
Check availability in Cregan Library and O'Reilly Library or as an ebook
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Haven by Emma Donoghue
In seventh-century Ireland, a scholar and priest called Artt has a dream telling him to leave the sinful world behind. Taking two monks he goes in search of an isolated spot on which to found a monastery. With only faith to guide them and drifting out into the Atlantic, the three men find a bare island, inhabited by tens of thousands of birds, and claim it for God. In such a place, what will survival mean?
Check availability in Cregan Library and O'Reilly Library
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If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery
In the 1970s, Topper and Sanya flee to Miami as political violence consumes their native Kingston. Excluded from society as Black immigrants, the couple and, later, their sons discover that America is far from the promised land. As things fall apart, the family remains motivated by their will to survive. Escoffery’s debut unravels what it means to be in between homes and cultures in a world at the mercy of capitalism and white supremacy.
Check availability in Cregan Library and O'Reilly Library
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Sleeping Car Porter by Suzette Mayr
It’s 1929, and Baxter is considered lucky, as a Black man, to have a job as a porter on a train that crisscrosses the continent. On one trip, the passengers are unruly, especially when the train is stranded for days. Their secrets leak out, blurring with Baxter’s sleep-deprivation hallucinations. When he finds an illicit postcard of two men Baxter keeps it, putting his job in peril.
Check availability in Cregan Library and O'Reilly Library
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Praiseworthy by Alexis Wright
In a small town in northern Australia a crazed visionary sees donkeys as the solution to the global climate crisis and the economic dependency of the Aboriginal people. His wife seeks solace from his madness and his sons dream of death and transformation. Praiseworthy pushes allegory and language to its limits, a cry of outrage against oppression and disadvantage, and a fable for the end of days.
Check availability in Cregan Library and O'Reilly Library or as an ebook