Emma Donoghueis the youngest of eight children of Frances and Denis Donoghue. She attended Catholic convent schools in Dublin, apart from one year in New York at the age of ten. In 1990 she earned a first-class honours BA in English and French from University College Dublin, and in 1997 a PhD (on the concept of friendship between men and women in eighteenth-century English fiction) from the University of Cambridge. Since the age of 23, Donoghue has earned her living as a full-time writer. After years of commuting between England, Ireland, and Canada, in 1998 she settled in London, Ontario, where she lives with her partner and their son and daughter.
Homebound (2026) Portia Elan "A fascinatingly plausible and atmospheric story of a future shaped by tech and love intertwined."
Ripeness (2025) Sarah Moss "Tender and rueful, Ripeness is a tale of being a foreigner that moves between 1960s Italy and 2020s Ireland, finding pain and bliss in both. Working at the height of her mature powers, Sarah Moss is a marvel of insight and eloquence."
A Family Matter (2025) Claire Lynch "A beautifully written, quiet yet devastating rebuke to an era of cruel prejudice, A Family Matter made me weep like a baby."
The Boy from the Sea (2025) Garrett Carr "A ruefully funny portrait of a dysfunctional family in a struggling town, The Boy from the Sea rings painfully true. I was gripped."
Our Evenings (2024) Alan Hollinghurst "Our Evenings is marked by a sharp eye, a tender sensibility, and an unflagging wit. I never wanted it to end."
Playground (2024) Richard Powers "An extraordinarily immersive journey through lives linked in mysterious ways-gripping, alarming, and uplifting."
Glorious Exploits (2024) Ferdia Lennon "With all the blunt humanity of Roddy Doyle, Glorious Exploits is a vividly conjured vision of the past. Madly ambitious, cathartic like all great tragedy, but shockingly funny too, Ferdia Lennon's outstandingly original debut is just glorious."
The Future (2023) Naomi Alderman "How can a novel of big ideas be such compulsively readable entertainment? A nail-biting love story and a witty page-turner about the pros and cons of human civilization, The Future is a wow."
Land of Milk and Honey (2023) C Pam Zhang "A brilliant, near-future fairytale, Land of Milk and Honey is the most sensuous novel about food I've ever read."
Sparrow (2023) James Hynes "Utterly engrossing, vivid, and honest, this coming of age story reaches across millennia to grab us by the throat."
Not Alone (2023) Sarah K Jackson "Not Alone kept me breathless with tension. An outstandingly credible and gripping adventure story, rooted in a deep understanding of both ecology and family."
The Midnight News (2023) Jo Baker "An intriguing and thrilling read, believable in the tiniest details - I've read half a dozen novels set in the Blitz but this one is the most atmospheric and memorable. It had me by the throat."
Trespasses (2022) Louise Kennedy "Louise Kennedy's Trespasses touches tenderly and hits hard - a compulsively readable love story which is also a lament for a society agonizingly divided against itself. Every word rings true."
Dear Miss Cushman (2021) Paula Martinac "Grounded in the nitty-gritties of 19th-century theatrical life, Dear Miss Cushman is a sparkling coming-of-age story about the roles free spirits shape for themselves, both on and off stage. Credible, engrossing, entertaining stuff."
Matrix (2021) Lauren Groff "A thrillingly vivid, adventurous story about women and power that will blow readers' minds. Left me gasping."
The Listeners (2021) Jordan Tannahill "The Listeners starts as a little hum in your ear and ends up blowing the top off your head. A deeply plausible, funny, horrifying story of a journey right off the rails."
The Last Exit (2021) (Jen Lu Mystery, book 1) Michael Kaufman "An engrossing thriller set in a fascinatingly plausible near future, The Last Exit centres on a human-AI partnership that’s as believable as it's moving."
The Great Offshore Grounds (2020) Vanessa Veselka "The Great Offshore Grounds blew me away. The tangled journeys of three siblings in the hardest of times pursuing freedom and love through a broken world will both move and dazzle readers. Wry, epic, glorious."
Megan Campisi "Sin Eater is a dark and thrilling page turner that turns a dystopian eye on the past in an unnervingly contemporary way. All hail Megan Campisi and her smashing novel."
Dear Edward (2020) Ann Napolitano "Dear Edward made me think, nod in recognition, care about its characters, and cry, and you can’t ask more of a novel than that."
The Evening Road (2017) Laird Hunt "A strange, dazzling novel, as audacious as it is lyrical, The Evening Road hauls up insight, sorrow, and even--somehow--wit from the well of American history."
The Quality of Silence (2015) Rosamund Lupton "Like a breath of icy air, this relentlessly tense thriller is also a child's-eye family drama like none other. Not since Smilla’s Sense of Snow have I shivered like this."
The Life and Death of Sophie Stark (2015) Anna North "I read The Life and Death of Sophie Stark with my heart in my mouth. Not only a dissection of genius and the havoc it can wreak, but also a thunderously good story."
Elizabeth Is Missing (2014) Emma Healey "Elizabeth Is Missing will stir and shake you: an investigation into a seventy-year-old crime, through the eyes of the most likeably unreliable of narrators. But the real mystery at its compassionate core is the fragmentation of the human mind."
The Lifeboat (2012) Charlotte Rogan "The Lifeboat traps the reader in a story that is exciting at the literal level and brutally moving at the existential. I read it in one go."
Carry the One (2012) Carol Anshaw "Will lift readers off their feet and bear them along on its eloquent tide."
The Song of Achilles (2011) Madeline Miller "Mary Renault lives again! A ravishingly vivid and convincing version of one of the most legendary of love stories."
What I Did (2011) Christopher Wakling "This is family life at its most believable: warm and messy, bored and raging. What I Did is every parent's nightmare, but will make you burst out laughing too. I LOVED IT."
