The University of Liverpool's Institute of Irish Studies has announced the shortlist for its sixth annual John McGahern Book Prize.
The prize, worth £5,000 (€5,824), is awarded for the best debut novel or short story collection by an Irish writer or writer resident in Ireland published in 2024.
The shortlisted books are Hagstone by Sinéad Gleeson; Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon; Girl in the Making by Anna Fitzgerald; and The Coast Road by Alan Murrin.
The shortlist was whittled down from seventeen entries by the shortlisting committee of Professor Dame Janet Beer, former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Liverpool; Dr Eleanor Lybeck, Senior Lecturer in Literature at the University, and Frank Shovlin, Professor of Irish literature at the University.
Unusually, the committee moved four books to the final list, rather than the traditional three. Professor Shovlin said: "So strong was the field for 2024 that we could not quite narrow the shortlist to three books and are asking our final arbiter, Colm Tóibín, to select from among four entries. Also unusual this year is that for the first time since we inaugurated the prize, all books on the shortlist are novels.
"We look forward to seeing Colm's final thoughts later this summer and welcoming the winner to read from their work and receive their award at the Liverpool Literary Festival on the weekend of October 17th to 19th."
The shortlisting committee said of each of the books:
Girl in the Making by Anna Fitzgerald
Anna Fitzgerald's Girl in the Making is a remarkably strong debut with echoes of both James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses. In subject, though not in style, it is reminiscent of one of the 21st century's strongest debuts, Eimear McBride's A Girl is a Half-formed Thing, following as it does the life of a troubled girl, Jean Kennedy, growing up in south Dublin over 15 years. Coming to maturity surrounded by a beloved mother, a hated father (known only as He or Him throughout), a sexually predatory uncle and her siblings, this coming-of-age novel is ultimately a hopeful consideration of the power of literature to teach, to transform and to heal.
Hagstone by Sinéad Gleeson
While Hagstone is Sinéad Gleeson's fiction debut, she has a long-established reputation as a broadcaster, artist and editor. Her essay collection, Constellations: Reflections from Life, won Non-Fiction Book of the Year at the 2019 Irish Book Awards. Gleeson's novel is a haunting meditation on the power and meaning of art. It is set on a remote Irish island and narrated by Nell, a committed but struggling artist who is commissioned by a local women's commune known as the Iníons to document their community and to create an artwork for their annual celebration of Samhain. Elegantly written, lyrical and serious about art and its imperatives, the narrative is compelling and invites one to a slow read. With intriguing traces of the supernatural throughout, mixed with striking descriptions of the natural world, Hagstone is a profound and moving novel.
Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon
Ferdia Lennon's Glorious Exploits has already been so widely lauded it is hard to think of it as a debut. Among its other plaudits are The Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction, The Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize and The Authors' Club Best First Novel Award. A striking feat of imagination, Lennon's novel reimagines the world of ancient Syracuse via the characters of Lampo and Gelon, a pair of unemployed potters who find themselves attempting to stage a play by Euripides using a quarry full of desperate Athenian prisoners of war as their cast.
Narrated as though by contemporary Dubliners, the story quickly absorbs the reader and it is hard not to find yourself rooting for the two lads. Wonderfully realised in its detailed recreation of the ancient Mediterranean world, it also has smart lessons to teach a modern audience about war, the refugee crisis and how kindness can prosper in the face of cruelty.
The Coast Road by Alan Murrin
Winner of the Irish Book Awards Newcomer of the Year 2024, The Coast Road by Alan Murrin, is a sensitive evocation of time, place and feeling, centring on memorable portraits of female protagonists. Murrin attempts to expose some of the untold damage wrought on individuals by repressive and oppressive social and political structures in 1990s Ireland, while considering legacies of that damage still shaping Irish society today. A deeply satisfying read, this is a novel whose central characters stay with the reader long after finishing the book and a writer in whose prose one can completely believe.
Professor Pete Shirlow, Director of the Institute of Irish Studies, said: "It is heartening, as ever, to see such quality emerging from the Irish literary scene. We at the Institute are honoured to be associated both with work of this calibre and with the name of John McGahern, one of our greatest and most enduring prose stylists. We very much look forward to meeting the winner and hearing them read from their work at October's festival."
The John McGahern Book Prize was established to promote new Irish fiction and to celebrate the memory of one of the country's greatest masters of prose fiction, John McGahern (1934-2006).
The call for entries for The John McGahern Book Prize for debut works published by an Irish author in 2025 is also currently open here.
