Anne Enright was born in Dublin, where she now lives and works. She has published one collection of stories, The Portable Virgin, which won the Rooney Prize, and two previous novels, The Wig My Father Wore and What Are You Like? which was shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel Award and won the Encore Award.
All Them Dogs (2026) Djamel White "In the best Irish style, Djamel White uses a local voice to blast through language and make it new. His hero, Tony Ward, is a bittersweet confection of self-defeating swagger . . . a stylish, adroit and gritty debut."
Open, Heaven (2025) Seán Hewitt "Hewitt writes with such tenderness and grace; in Open, Heaven, beauty, longing and the natural world form a single chord that strikes the heart of the reader with love's impossibility. The heightened, poetic state of adolescence is perfectly captured here."
The Echoes (2024) Evie Wyld "It takes brilliance and verve to leap into the darkness as Evie Wyld does here. What a discovery - this is the first book of her books I have read; it will certainly not be the last."
Whale Fall (2024) Elizabeth O'Connor "The quiet cadences of Whale Fall contain a deep melody of loss held and let go. It is a gentle, tough story about profound change."
Wild Houses (2024) Colin Barrett "Colin Barrett quietly, insistently, writes so deeply into his characters you could reach out and touch them. Wild Houses is a gift of true storytelling and Barrett's talent burns up the page."
This Plague of Souls (2023) Mike McCormack "This is the reason Mike McCormack is one of Ireland's best-loved novelists; he is the most modestly brilliant writer we have. His delicate abstractions are woven from the ordinary and domestic - both metaphysical and moving, McCormack's work asks the big questions about our small lives."
The Red Bird Sings (2023) Aoife Fitzpatrick "Written with a compelling, lyrical intensity, The Red Bird Sings is a historical drama whose characters are full of a a suppressed fury, and haunted by a need for justice. A deeply felt and accomplished debut."
Dinner Party (2021) Sarah Gilmartin "Sarah Gilmartin is a natural writer: she gives us terrific, complex characters and strong themes, in prose that is easy, fluent and charged with insight."
Klara and the Sun (2021) Kazuo Ishiguro "There is something so steady and beautiful about the way Klara is always approaching connection, like a Zeno’s arrow of the heart. People will absolutely love this book, in part because it enacts the way we learn how to love. Klara and the Sun is wise like a child who decides, just for a little while, to love their doll. ‘What can children know about genuine love?’ Klara asks. The answer, of course, is everything."
Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line (2020) Deepa Anappara "Storytelling at its best—not just sympathetic, vivid, and beautifully detailed, but completely assured and deft . . . We care about these characters from the first page and our concern for them is richly repaid."
Last Stories (2018) William Trevor "His stories are formally beautiful and, at the same time, interested in the smallness of human lives. He was, as a writer, watchful, unsentimental, alert to frailty and malice. A master craftsman."
Midwinter Break (2017) Bernard MacLaverty "MacLaverty is a sweetly astute writer, a master of fine detail, compassing the quotidian, the intimate and the sacred. Midwinter Break shows us how ordinary and immense love can be."
Spoils (2017) Brian Van Reet "Clear, authentic, and beautifully written, Spoils is a book about war for people who don't like books about war."
Solace (2011) Belinda McKeon "A story of clear-eyed compassion and quiet intelligence."
Hand in the Fire (2010) Hugo Hamilton "A great international writer. His is the voice of the migrant, the stranger and the traveller in us all."
Antigona and Me (2009) Kate Clanchy "Not just a heart-stopping story, but one of that is essential of our times."
