The longlist for the 2023 Booker Prize has been announced, with Irish writers making history.
The Booker Prize Foundation has announced the longlist for their prestigious award. The Booker Prize recognises the best English-language novels published in the UK and Ireland.
Irish authors have made history, making up one-third of the longlist. This is the first time this has happened since the award’s inception in 1969.
The Booker Prize – a prestigious literary award
The Booker Prize is a prestigious literary award for books written in the English language and published in the UK and Ireland.
It began in 1969 and originally was only open to writers from the British Commonwealth, Ireland, and South Africa. However, since 2014, it has been open to writers of all nationalities.
The five-person judging panel comprises authors, publishers, booksellers, librarians, and literary agents. The panel changes each year, with appointments made by the Booker Prize Foundation.
The winner receives a £50,000 purse and, perhaps more importantly, a glut of international publicity that invariably boosts global sales.
Previous Irish winners include Iris Murdoch for The Sea, the Sea, Roddy Doyle for Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, John Banville for The Sea, and Anne Enright for The Gathering. The most recent Irish winner was Belfast’s Anna Burns for her 2018 book Milkman.
Making history – Irish authors make up one-third of the longlist
Irish writers have made Booker Prize history, making up one-third of the 2023 longlist. Alongside authors from Malaysia, Kenya, Scotland, England, the USA, Canada, and Nigeria, you’ll find four Irish nominees.
Paul Murray received a nomination for The Bee Sting, a 650-page tome that tells the story of the down-on-its-luck Barnes family in rural Ireland. Murray last appeared on the longlist for his 2010 novel Skippy Dies.
How to Build a Boat, by Elaine Feeny, interweaves the stories of teenage Jamie O’Neill and a teacher at his school, Tess, in an exploration of the themes of love and connection.
Paul Lynch’s Dublin-set Prophet Song portrays a country under the rule of a tyrannical government as the novel’s protagonist fights to save her family.
In Sebastian Barry’s Old God’s Time, a retired policeman coexists peacefully with his landlord and neighbour until two colleagues arrive at his door to revisit an old case. This is the Dublin-born writer’s fifth nomination.
The 2023 longlist – “a list to excite, challenge, delight, and bring wonder”
Chair of this year’s judges, Esi Edugyan, said that the 2023 longlist “is defined by its freshness, by the irreverence of new voices, by the iconoclasm of established ones”.
Edugyan, herself a three-time nominee, added, “All 13 novels cast new light on what it means to exist in our time, and they do so in original and thrilling ways.
“Their range is vast, both in subject and form: they shocked us, made us laugh, filled us with anguish, but above all, they stayed with us. This is a list to excite, challenge, delight, a list to bring wonder”.
The winner of the 2023 Booker Prize will be announced during an event and London’s Old Billingsgate on 26 November.
