NEWS

Donal Ryan long listed for the Man Booker 2018 Prize

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Donal Ryan was long listed for the Man Booker 2018 Prize on 23rd July for his latest novel From a Low and Quiet Sea. The Lilliput Press has a limited edition of the title for sale, all signed by the author.

The Man Booker Prize is recognised as the leading prize for literary fiction written in English. This year the long list comprises of 13 novels. There are 2 other Irish writers on the long list, Sally Rooney and Anna Burns. The shortlist will be announced on 20th September and the winner on the 16th October.

Ryan’s novel From a Low and Quiet Sea is about three men, each of whom is searching for something he has lost. Farouk has protected his wife and daughter as best he can from the ravages of war in Syria. Lampy is distracted after Chloe stole his heart when she left him. For John, the game is what it’s always been about. Manipulating people for enjoyment, for spite — and just because he can.

The judges had the following comment on the title following its announcement on the long list A portrait of three men in one landscape, From A Low and Quiet Sea holds its narratives in perfectly sustained equilibrium, then brings them together without cliché. A deft, unshowy novel about manhood and momentous contingency, it evokes the way in which real lives unfold and wrap around each other.’

Donal Ryan was born in Nenagh in North Tipperary. His first novel, The Spinning Heart found in the slush pile in Lilliput, which they subsquently published. Ryan won the Guardian First Book Award, the EU Prize for Literature and Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards with The Spinning Heart. It was also shortlisted for the IMPAC International Literary Award and longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. The Thing About December, A Slanting of the Sun (2015), and All We Shall Know are all published by Lilliput.