Tuesday 8 September 2020

Shortlist announced for the 2020 International DUBLIN Literary Award

Milkman by Irish author Anna Burns is among the 10 novels shortlisted for the 2020 International DUBLIN Literary Award.

The award of €100,000 is the world’s most valuable annual prize for a single work of fiction published in English. The 10 novels on the shortlist were chosen from 156 books nominated by libraries around the world. The winner will be announced on Thursday 22nd October during the International Literature Festival Dublin (ILFDublin) reimagined 2020 festival.

The shortlisted titles are:
1. The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker (British)
2. Milkman by Anna Burns (Irish)
3. Disoriental by Négar Djavadi (Iranian-French). Translated from the French by Tina Kover.
4. Washington Black by Esi Edugyan (Canadian)
5. An American Marriage by Tayari Jones (American)
6. History of Violence by Édouard Louis (French). Translated from the French by Lorin Stein.
7. The Friend by Sigrid Nunez (American)
8. There There by Tommy Orange (Native American)
9. All the Lives We Never Lived by Anuradha Roy (Indian)
10. Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk (Polish). Translated by from the Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones.

Belfast-born author Burns won the 2018 Man Booker Prize for this novel of a teenage girl growing up in a politically divided and unnamed city, which we can assume is the author’s hometown. In a city where to be interesting is to be noticed and to be noticed is dangerous, she attracts the attention of a senior paramilitary figure, the milkman. Burns explores the experience of a young woman trying to negotiate her way in a society beset by political and patriarchal oppression.