Need A New Read? Here Are The Four Irish Books Long-Listed For The Booker Prize

They’re all worth a read!

If you’ve been looking for a book to get stuck into over the bank holiday weekend, worry not because we have you covered.

Or at least the Booker Prize has you covered as four Irish authors have been longlisted for the prestigious title.

The Booker Prize select entries published in the UK and Ireland between October 1st 2022 and September 30th 2023. The longlist of 13 books AKA the Booker Dozen was announced this week with the shortlist of six books to follow on 21 September.

Meet your new obsessions…

How to Build a Boat – Elaine Feeney

Pic: Penguin

Set in the West of Ireland, this book follows 13-year-old Jamie who is trying to make sense of the world.

There are two things that Jamie wants more above anything else – to build a Perpetual Motion Machine, and to connect with his mother Noelle, who died when he was born.

Now in a new school, he finds two people who might just be able to help him.

The Bee Sting – Paul Murray

Pic: Penguin

The Barnes family has fallen into tough times after patriarch Dickie’s once-lucrative car business is going under. Each member of the family deals with it differently.

Dickie is building an apocalypse-proof bunker in the woods, his wife Imelda is selling her jewellery on eBay, their daughter Cass is drinking herself into oblivion rather than study for her final exams and their son PJ is planning to run away from home.

Can the family turn their luck back around or has their fate already been written?

Old God’s Time – Sebastian Barry

Pic: Faber and Faber

Recently retired policeman Tom Kettle is settling into the quiet of his new home overlooking the Irish Sea.

He’s ready to let his past go and get to know his new neighbours.

When two former colleagues turn up at his door with questions about a decades-old case, one which Tom never quite came to terms with, he finds himself pulled into the darkest currents of his past.

Prophet Song – Paul Lynch

Pic: Simon & Schuster

A book set in Ireland but not as we know it.

One evening Eilish Stack answers her front door to find the GNSB on her step. Two officers from Ireland’s newly formed secret police are here to interrogate her husband, a trade unionist.

Ireland’s government turning towards tyranny and when her husband disappears, Eilish finds herself caught within the nightmare logic of a society that is quickly unravelling.

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