Biography

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Warwick Prize for Women in Translation longlist 2025

Fourteen titles have been longlisted for the 8th annual award of the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation. The 2025 competition received a total of 145 eligible entries from 34 languages.

The longlist covers 10 languages, with Slovenian represented for the first time in the history of the prize. 

The £1000 prize was established by the University of Warwick in 2017 to address the gender imbalance in translated literature and to increase the number of international women’s voices accessible by a British and Irish readership. 

“For this award that considers all genres on equal terms, the judges have found longlist places not only for fiction of all sorts – from fiercely contemporary short stories to the epic debut by one of the 20th century’s greatest literary voices. We have selected searing memoir too, and (this year) an especially rich haul of poetry. The poetry books stretch from luminous snapshots of everyday experience to immersive mythic narrative in verse. Like our prose selections, they demonstrate the vision and artistry both of the original authors – and of the translators who carry this precious cargo across languages and cultures. Without them, our imaginative worlds would be so much smaller, and poorer.”

The 14 longlisted titles are:

And the Walls Became the World All Around, Johanna Ekström & Sigrid Rausing (Sweden)

translated from Swedish by Sigrid Rausing (Granta) (Biography/Memoir)

– Johanna Ekstrom was a Swedish artist and writer who published over a dozen books of poetry, fiction and memoir in her lifetime. In 2022, ill with cancer, she asked her closest friend, Sigrid Rausing, to edit and finish her final book. Originally a memoir on the loss of a relationship during the pandemic, the focus shifted from the loss of love to, potentially, the loss of life.

These excerpts from Ekstrom’s notebooks interwoven with Rausing’s reflections on the text and on their friendship are a testament to a voice and a life; a book made in grief over the loss of a close friendship of over thirty years.

Désirée Congo, Evelyne Trouillot (Haitian)

translated from French by M.A. Salvodon (University of Virginia Press)

– Désirée Congo is a riveting, powerful, original novel set in the final years of the Haitian Revolution. In this richly textured work, Trouillot constructs an intricate web from the varied experiences of freedmen and women, maroons, enslaved African people and their Creole children, as well as French planters and white smallholders in colonial Saint-Domingue at a historical moment of upheaval.

A lyrical book whose characters enrich our understanding of the last confrontations between Haitian revolutionaries and Napoleon’s imperial forces – a conflict that resulted in the success of the largest slave revolt in recorded history and the independence of the first Black state in the western hemisphere.

Djinns, Fatma Aydemir (Kurdish)

translated from German by Jon Cho-Polizzi (Peirene Press)

– For thirty years, Hüseyin has worked in Germany, taking every extra shift and carefully saving, providing for his wife and their four children. Finally, he has set aside enough to buy an apartment back in Istanbul – a new centre for the family and a place for him to retire. Just as this future is in reach, Hüseyin’s tired heart gives up. His family rush to him, travelling from Germany by plane and car, each of his children conflicted as they process their relationship with their parents, and each other.

Reminiscent of Bernardine Evaristo or Zadie Smith, Djinns portrays a family at the end of the 20th century in all its complexity: full of secrets, questions, silence and love.

The Empusium, Olga Tokarczuk (Poland)

translated from Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones (Fitzcarraldo Editions)

– In Sept 1913, Mieczysław Wojnicz, a student suffering from TB, arrives at Wilhelm Opitz’s Guesthouse for Gentlemen, a health resort in what is now western Poland. Every day, residents gather to imbibe the hallucinogenic local liqueur, to obsess over money, status and to discuss the great issues of the day: Will there be war? Monarchy or democracy? Do devils exist? Are women inherently inferior?

Meanwhile, disturbing things begin to happen around the guesthouse. As stories of shocking events in the nearby highlands reach them, a sense of dread builds. Someone, or something seems to be watching them and attempting to infiltrate their world. Little does Mieczysław realise, as he tries to unravel truths within himself and the mystery of the sinister forces beyond, that they’ve chosen their next target.

A century after the publication of The Magic Mountain, Olga Tokarczuk revisits Thomas Mann territory and lays claim to it, blending horror story, comedy, folklore and feminist parable with brilliant storytelling.

Francis Bacon’s Nanny, Maylis Besserie (France)

translated from French by Clíona Ní Ríordáin (The Lilliput Press)

– At the centre of the life of the great artists was an unexpected life-long influences Jessie Lightfoot shielded a young Francis Bacon from the brutish violence of his bullying father, as well as from his worst self-immolating excesses later in life. The tenderness, wit and warmth of this inimitable Nanny stands in illuminating relief to the sulphurous palette that defined Bacon’s work.

Beyond the humour and heart of an extraordinary woman confronted with the shade and guile of the art world, Maylis Besserie offers a glimpse of Ireland in the first half of the 20th C, a place apart from the rest of the world, whose landscapes, imagery and animals haunted the painter’s canvases.

In the final of Maylis Besserie’s trilogy, her focus on the art and lives of artists who crossed borders between France and Ireland closes as Bacon confronts boundaries between the real and the imagined.

Hungry for What, María Bastarós (Spain)

translated from Spanish by Kevin Gerry Dunn (Daunt Books Publishing)

– Violence and desire shatter the surface of the everyday in an exceptional collection of short stories.

A game between a woman’s father and husband simmers and boils into scalding danger; a daughter creates an elaborate feast for her grieving mother; a solar eclipse burns the emotions and truths of a suppressed neighbourhood into the open.

Foregrounding voices and experiences of women and children, veering from claustrophobic, suffocating suburbia to untamed nature and its great vistas of desert and sky, hungry for what focuses on the terror of normality, prising back its veneer of respectability to reveal the hostility & menace that seethe beneath.

Lies and Sorcery, Elsa Morante (Italy) 

translated from Italian by Jenny McPhee (Penguin Press)

– For years Elisa has lived in an imaginary world of her own but when her guardian dies, young Elisa feels compelled to confront the truth of her family’s tortured and dramatic history by telling the story of her mother, Anna, and grandmother, Cesira. Elisa is a seductive, if less than reliable, spinner of stories, drawing the reader into a tale of intrigue, treachery and self-delusion, which is increasingly revealed to be an exploration of a legacy of political and social injustice.

First published in 1948, Elsa Morante’s novel won the Viareggio Prize & earned her the lasting admiration of writers such as Italo Calvino and Natalia Ginzburg.

My Secret Life, Krisztina Tóth (Hungary)

translated from Hungarian by George Szirtes (Bloodaxe Books)

– My Secret Life is the first book in English translation by one of the leading Hungarian poets of the generation who began publishing in the late 1980s. The poems in My Secret Life were selected from three of nine published collections, with the addition of some new or previously uncollected poems. 

Phantom Pain Wings, Kim Hyesoon (South Korea)

translated from Korean by Don Mee Choi (And Other Stories)

– Winged ventriloquy – a powerful new poetry collection channelling the language of birds by one of South Korea’s innovative contemporary writers. An iconic figure in the emergence of feminist poetry in South Korea and now internationally renowned, Kim Hyesoon pushes the poetic envelope into the farthest reaches of the lyric universe. In her new collection, Kim depicts the memory of war trauma and the collective grief of parting through what she calls an “I-do-bird-sequence,” where “Bird-human is the ‘I.’”

Too Great A Sky, Liliana Corobca (Romania)

translated from Romanian by Monica Cure (Seven Stories Press UK)

– The story of the deportation of Romanians from Bukovina, an exercise in historical memory which demonstrates how to maintain humanity in impossible conditions.

Translation of the Route, Laura Wittner (Argentina)

translated from Spanish by Juana Adcock (Bloodaxe Books & Poetry Translation Centre)

– In poems that are precise, frank & finely tuned, award-winning Argentine poet Laura Wittner explores the specificities of parental and familial love, life after marriage, and the re-ignition of the self in middle age.

Un Amor, Sara Mesa (Spain)

translated from Spanish by Katie Whittemore (Peirene Press)

– Fleeing from past mistakes, Nat leaves her life in the city for the rural village of La Escapa. She rents a small house from a negligent landlord, adopts a dog and begins to work on her first literary translation. But nothing is easy: the dog is ill tempered and skittish and misunderstandings with her neighbour’s thrum below the surface. When conflict arises over repairs to her house, Nat receives an unusual offer that tests her sense of self, challenges her prejudices, and reveals her most unexpected desires. As she tries to understand her decision, the community of La Escapa comes together in search of a scapegoat.

Vanishing Points, Lucija Stupica (Slovenia)

translated from Slovenian by Andrej Peric (Arc Publications)

– Lucia Stupica’s 4th book of poetry comes after a decade of silence allowing her poetic voice to become more complex and sensitive to the cracks in time and in the world through which she observes fragments of life – imperfect, painful and real. Her expression retains its tenderness, establishing a deep dialogue with the world, the past and the present, with appearances and the things they conceal.

In an attempt at a new understanding of the world, Stupica writes of the role of women as the hidden movers of history, and the role of those, be they a man, a child or a random stranger, who see the experience of the other, and are open to it. These poems of love, loss, mystery and what lies beyond our understanding make for a haunting and memorable collection in Andrej Peric’s beautiful translation.

We Do Not Part, Han Kang (South Korea)

translated from Korean by e.yaewon & Paige Aniyah Morris (Hamish Hamilton, Penguin Random House UK)

– One morning in December, Kyungha is called to her friend Inseon’s hospital bedside. Airlifted to Seoul for an operation following a wood-chopping accident, Inseon is bedridden and begs Kyungha to take the first plane to her home on Jeju Island to feed her pet bird, who will quickly die unless it receives food.

As Kyungha arrives a snowstorm hits. Lost in a world of snow, she begins to wonder if she will arrive in time to save the bird – or even survive the terrible cold that envelops her with every step. She doesn’t yet suspect the darkness awaiting at her friend’s house.

There, the long-buried story of Inseon’s family surges into light, in dreams and memories passed from mother to daughter, and in a painstakingly assembled archive, documenting the terrible massacre 70 years before that saw 30,000 Jeju civilians murdered.

We Do Not Part is a hymn to friendship, a eulogy to the imagination, and above all a powerful indictment against forgetting.

* * * * * *

I have not read any of these titles, though I have read Han Kang’s extraordinary Human Acts, which this new novel reminds me of. Here the Novel Prize winning author asks similar questions of humanity. Another Nobel Prize winning author Olga Tokarczuk, has a new book here; I enjoyed Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, but looking out for the less familiar, I’m interested in Kurdish author Fatma Aydemir‘s Djinns and another Italian classic author Elsa Morante looks tempting, despite the length.

Now that I’ve created the summaries, I can reread them at a leisurely pace in one location.

Any that interest you from this list?

The winner will be announced at a ceremony at The Shard in London on Thursday 27th November.

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Madame Fourcade’s Secret War by Lynne Olson

The Daring Young Woman Who Led France’s Largest Spy Network Against Hitler

I became aware of this book thanks to a friend who is also interested in historical stories about women in France. I knew at once I had to read it.

While my friend was still reading it some months ago, I happened to go on a walk, following a route I have taken many times and noticed for the first time that Madame Fourcade’s name featured on one of the street signs. You can imagine my surprise and delight! She became even more of a talking point and I looked forward to getting a copy of the book (not that easy) to read.

I will say if you are interested in reading it, that the font size of the paperback version (which I read) is quite small compared to the hardback version (a copy of which I bought for a friend).

Famous French Women, A Rare Vision

Most of the street signs in France are the names of people that have featured in their recent history. However, it is very rare to come across the name of a woman. In our town Marie Curie has a street sign, but even then, she shares it with her husband. Marie Madeleine Fourcade not only has a sign all to herself, strategically placed at the top of a hill overlooking the town, but she was also the very first woman in France’s history to be given a funeral at Les Invalides, an important complex of buildings in Paris that celebrates France’s military glory.

Marie Madeleine’s father worked for a French shipping company in Shanghai. Her mother refused to stay behind in Paris, though agreed to return to Marseille for the birth of her daughter in 1909. Marie-Madeleine and her siblings grew up in Shanghai, with freedoms unheard of for the social and family circles they hailed from. Those freedoms, an early bilingual education and their return to Paris when she was 10 years old, set her up in many ways for the future role she would play, organising and ultimately leading an important French intelligence network.

As a young woman, she again lived abroad, in Morocco. She drove a car, learned to fly a plane and had a job. She rejected French society’s (and her husband’s) restrictive ideas about how women should behave. She had trained to become a concert pianist, worked at a commercial radio station and would forge her own future.

Access to Important Connections, Two Rivals

Street named after Marie Madeleine Fourcade, co founder and chef de resistance of the Alliance network 'Noah's Ark' codename hérrison, hedgehog during World War 2

Though never in the military herself, she was married briefly to a French military officer, as was her sister. She thus had opportunity to meet and observe some of the younger officers through her social connections, men who would later become important during the war years.

Two of the most prominent members of that younger group – Lieutenant Colonel Charles de Gaulle and Major Georges Loustaunau Lacau – took centre stage in the discussion on rue Vaneau, engaging in a debate that quickly escalated into a full-blown argument. It soon became obvious to Marie-Madeleine that the two officers viewed each other as rivals…

Both products of Saint-Cyr, France’s elite military academy Ecole Supérieure de Guerre, both fought and received multiple citations for bravery in WWI; they were brilliant, ambitious and egocentric. A rebellious streak put them at odds with Marshal Philippe Pétain (a French general who commanded the French Army in WW1 and would become head of what became known as the Régime de Vichy Vichy France). The rivalry between the pair would also keep them from being unified during the war years and likely impacted perceptions afterwards.

A Partnership, A Turning Point

After a discussion at one of the social events around March 1936, Loustaunau-Lacau contacted Marie-Madeleine and asked for her help in creating a journal that would argue the case for reform of the military and open the eyes of leaders to the imminent threat of Germany. The work would begin immediately.

“One of my Belgian friends has procured secret dossiers that expose the intentions of the German high command,” he said. “I need to get them quickly. Such documents must not travel by mail. You have a car. You must go to Brussels and collect them. I will pay all expenses.”

An Intelligence Network is Formed, Working Inside France

Caught up in this real life spy drama, Marie-Madeleine agreed – a decision that would radically change her life. From that moment, she wrote later, she and Loustaunau-Lacau began building an intelligence network against Nazi Germany.

Over the next two years, they would recruit informants in France, Switzerland, Belgium and Germany who passed on reports about the build up of the German armed forces. Loustaunau-Lacau adopted the codename Navarre, after Henri de Navarre, later King Henri IV of France. Given the risks they faced, that one of them might be captured or killed, Navarre insisted they share leadership of the network and when he was compromised, as promised Fourcade took the lead role.

At the same time, backbencher in the British House of Commons, Winston Churchill had created a similar private network and Charles de Gaulle decamped to London, setting up his Free French operation. Fourcade suggested they join with him.

Her mentor rejected the idea outright. In England, he said, they would be refugees, just like de Gaulle, dependent on the British for everything. At that point, almost no one in the British government, with the promising exception of Winston Churchill, took de Gaulle and his minuscule band of followers seriously.

They would resist from within.

Another Perspective of History

Founded in Vichy in Septemeber 1940 by Georges Loustaunau-Lacau and Marie-Madeleine Fourcade, the Crusade Intelligence Network (later called Alliance) moves it headquarters from Vichy to Pau in early 1941 and to Marseille later that year.

Madame Fourcade’s Secret War is a work of history, told in a compelling narrative voice, that not only focuses on the leadership role of this one extraordinary woman, but will likely expand most reader’s knowledge of what living in France under German occupation was like for the many, who vehemently opposed the way their government had capitulated to a hostile outside force, without much initial resistance.

Personally, the history I learned in school was quite different, as it was told from a very anglo-centric perspective, so the narratives stemmed from how this threat impacted the United Kingdom and their allies.

I never really understood what exactly happened within France in the lead up to the occupation, how it impacted their government and rendered the military ineffective. So many of the protections a country might normally expect when facing a hostile enemy were lacking; to go against the orders of a government (even if under occupation) was a betrayal.

Cinema Can Create Its Own Self Serving Narrative

Though there have been books and films about the war and the French resistance, little has been shown of the importance of the Alliance network and of Marie-Madeleine Fourcade’s achievements. Most of the attention has gone to stories of sabotage and escape lines, of battles and blitzes.

Saboteurs and other resistance fighters in France were certainly important after D-Day, but they did little to obstruct the Germans before then. Escape networks did heroic work in smuggling shot-down Allied airmen and others out of occupied Europe and back to freedom, but their actual contribution to victory was small.

I would certainly be interested in a cinematic development of Fourcade’s story, one that traverses France and shows a very different side to those who travelling around the country, making radio transmissions and secret flights across the channel, where they are hosted by memorable characters in this real life adventure.

Noah’s Ark and the Hedgehog

Les Invalides Paris, where Marie Madeleine Fourcade's funeral was held, the first woman in France to be commemorated there.
Les Invalides Paris

In the late 1960’s Fourcade would get her story down in a gripping memoir entitled Noah’s Ark, the name the German’s referred to their network as, after they would use codenames of animals, Fourcade’s was hérrison (hedgehog), a small animal that intelligently eluded predators.

Lynne Olson provides a thoroughly researched, immensely readable account of the creation of the Alliance, one of the original and most important resistance networks in France. From its foundation by Navarre and Fourcade to the establishment of thousands of recruits, the many dangerous activities they undertook, throughout the war, all that was able to be continued by Fourcade due to her continued leadership deserves to be more widely recognised and appreciated.

They Will Not Be Forgotten, The People

L'Arche de Noé Réseau Alliance 1940-1945 by Marie Madeleine Fourcade autobiogrpahy of her role as the leader of a French resistance during world war 2

The book is full of stories about the different people she recruited, the relationships and loyalties and daring escapades each of them went on, in order to bring their intelligence to the Alliance.

It is also, sadly, a homage to those who would be punished and killed for their roles, some, so close to the end of the war, it is excruciating to read. That Fourcade survived and was able to share her story and thus the courage and bravery and loyalty of others is a true gift to all humanity.

It’s the first time I have read an account that centres what was happening in France at this local level, with a more global scope, that renders the dangerous and delicate situation of those in the military, who were against the capitulation of their government. While in great danger to themselves, they were able to band together like-minded civilians and provide those on the outside with the information they needed to mount a significant and ultimately successful defence.

Highly Recommended!

Author, Lynne Olson

Lynne Olson is a New York Times bestselling author of nine books of history, most of which focus on World War II. Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has called her “our era’s foremost chronicler of World War II politics and diplomacy.”

Born in Hawaii, Lynne graduated magna cum laude from the University of Arizona. Before becoming a full-time author, she worked as a journalist, with the Associated Press as a national feature writer in New York, a foreign correspondent in AP’s Moscow bureau, and a political reporter in Washington. She left the AP to join the Washington bureau of the Baltimore Sun, where she covered national politics and eventually the White House.

Lynne’s latest book is Empress of the Nile: The Daredevil Woman Archaeologist Who Saved Egypt’s Ancient Temples From Extinction (2023).

Three of her earlier books were immediate New York Times bestsellers; Madame Fourcade’s Secret War: The Daring Young Woman Who Led France’s Largest Spy Network Against the Nazis (2019), Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America’s Fight Over World War II (2013), and Citizens of London: The Americans Who Stood with Britain in Its Darkest, Finest Hour (2010). 

Lynne lives in Washington, DC with her husband, Stanley Cloud, with whom she co-authored two books.

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bell hooks: The Last Interview and other conversations

The Last Interview is a series of books each entitled, The Last Interview and Other Conversations that offers a fresh look at some of the world’s leading innovative writers and edgiest cultural figures by gathering conversations from throughout an artist’s career and collecting them in one volume. There are currently 41 books in the series and the next one coming will feature Sinead O’Connor.

Having read two of the books in bell hooks Love trilogy, All About Love and Salvation (the third book Communion, I have – but yet to read), I was interested to read these interviews. They provide more background on the author and allow for the greater understanding and depth in a subject that conversation can bring. They include an exploration of her affiliation and interest in Buddhist thought.

Overall, while the interviews are interesting, I think it is great to read the work of bell hooks, as she was quite prolific on a number of topics and a very engaging writer and thinker. If you have read all her work, this will be a bonus read and if you haven’t these interviews, some of which you can find online are a great introduction.

Meet and Read bell hooks

feminist interview bell hooks on writing criticism

bell hooks (born Gloria Jean Watkins) (1952-2021) was an African-American author, feminist, and social activist. Her writing focused on education, political theory, the interconnectivity of race, class, and gender and their ability to produce and perpetuate systems of oppression and domination.

The pseudonym she used, was the name of her great-grandmother, to honour female legacies, spelling it always in lower case letters, to focus on her works and message, about ideas and not herself.

She published over thirty books and numerous scholarly and mainstream articles, appeared in several documentary films and participated in various public lectures. Primarily through a postmodern female perspective, she addressed race, class, and gender in education, art, history, sexuality, mass media and feminism.

The bell hooks theory

She is most well known for her feminist theory that recognizes that social classifications (e.g. race, gender, sexual identity, class, etc.) are interconnected, and that ignoring their intersection creates inequality and oppression towards women and changes the experience of living as a woman in society.

On Love

nonfiction essays love effect of domination patriarchy black woman perspective

In her book All About Love, bell hooks perspective is heart lead, her definition of love leaves behind conditioned perceptions of romance and desire and the traditional roles of carer, nurturer, provider – and suggests that it might be ‘the will to do for oneself or another that which enables us to grow and evolve spiritually’ love becomes a verb not a noun.

“All too often women believe it is a sign of commitment, an expression of love, to endure unkindness or cruelty, to forgive and forget. In actuality, when we love rightly we know that the healthy, loving response to cruelty and abuse is putting ourselves out of harm’s way.”

I find her work particularly interesting as it sits alongside the work of another cultural commentator, Riane Eisler’s The Chalice and the Blade and Nurturing Our Humanity in addressing those systems of domination such as class, gender and race that interfere with our ability to commune with one another.

It is also in alignment with the work of Anita Moorjani, another heart based spiritual commentator, who wrote Sensitive is the new Strong, Dying To Be Me and What If This is Heaven?.

The Interviews – No Such Thing as Bad Publicity?

One of the interviews addresses the controversy of her decision to appear on a live talk show, something she did as a way for her to reach a different, wider audience. It was a strategy that in one sense did not work that well for her, due to the hard time she was given on the show. However, despite the public take-down, her aim was still achieved, as the silent majority who watched it from their homes, will have become more aware of who she was and the message she was trying to portray, in particular to Black women.

Photo P. Apichodilok Pexels.com

In the collection of seven interviews, stretching from early in her career until her last interview, she discusses feminism, the complexity of rap music and masculinity, her relationship to Buddhism, the “politic of domination,” sexuality, and love and the importance of communication across cultural borders.

Dominator culture has tried to keep us all afraid, to make us choose safety instead of risk, sameness instead of diversity. Moving through that fear, finding out what connects us, reveling in our differences; this is the process that brings us closer, that gives us a world of shared values, of meaningful community.
– Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope, 2003

Whether she was sparking controversy on campuses or facing criticism from contemporaries, hooks relentlessly challenged herself and those around her, she inserted herself into the tensions of the cultural moment, and anchored herself with love.

For me, forgiveness and compassion are always linked: how do we hold people accountable for wrongdoing and yet at the same time remain in touch with their humanity enough to believe in their capacity to be transformed?
– in conversation with Maya Angelou, 1998

On Tough Love, Loving Environments and Community

This was an interview by Abigail Bereola for Shondaland in December 2017 on self-love, discussing why we know so little about it or how to even cultivate it, and how a lack of it has played into the patriarchal culture of workplace abuse and assault.

I think that societies begin with our small units of community, which are family — whether bio or chosen. I am often amazed when I meet people that I see have been raised in loving families because they’re so different and they live in the world differently. I don’t agree that every family is dysfunctional — I think we don’t want to admit that when people are loving, it’s a different world. It’s an amazing world. It’s a world of peace. It’s not that they don’t have pain, but they know how to handle their pain in a way that’s not self-negating. And so I think insomuch as we begin to look again at the family and challenging and changing patriarchy within family systems, irrespective of what those families are, there’s hope for love.

I have enjoyed her books considerably and the interviews extend her work into the joy of what conversation can bring. Though some of her work is clearly targeted at Black women, I believe there is value in it for all, indeed, it is necessary to read outside one’s own race, gender, culture, ethnic group and language, to understand other perspectives and the issues that others face. Sometimes we find resonance, other times, we pay attention, listen, read and learn. There is plenty to learn and consider in the writings and conversations of bell hooks.

N.B. This was an ARC (Advance Reader Copy) kindly provided by the publisher via NetGalley.

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Irish Book Awards Winners 2023

There were lots of winners at the An Post Irish Book Awards in Dublin, there being so many different categories from fiction, non-fiction, popular fiction, crime fiction to newcomer. From a small base of three categories, the awards now include eighteen categories spanning a broad range of literary genres. Thousands of readers vote to select the winners every year.

The Novel of the Year prize for which there were eight worthy contenders on the shortlist, went to the Booker shortlist nominated Paul Murray for his fourth novel, the tragicomedy The Bee Sting. Read a Q & A with the author here.

Set in a town in the Midlands in 2014, at the tail end of the financial crash, the Barnes family has a car dealership – they’ve just about managed to survive until now, but as the novel begins the business is on the brink of going under, and the family may be going down with it. The book navigates a family facing this calamity with irony, panging emotion and existential tones. Described as a masterful tragicomedy of familial chaos and dynamics. 

The one book I was championing (reviewed here), the moving, courageous and inspiring Poor by Katriona O’Sullivan, scooped two awards, Biography of the Year and the Listener’s Choice award.

Irish Book Awards Biography of the Year 2023

Mark O’Connell won the Non-Fiction Book of the Year with his profound confrontation of true crime, A Thread of Violence a negotiation with the act of writing about murder, and a navigation of the chasm and interplay between fiction and non-fiction, taking the infamous case of Malcolm Macarthur as its subject, while Liz Nugent took the Crime Fiction Book of the Year for Strange Diamond Sally.

Newcomer of the Year went to rising Irish talent Colin Walsh for Kala, a gripping literary thriller, set in a small Irish town suffocating on its own secrets as three friends reunite in their hometown where their friend Kala disappeared fifteen years ago.

In an interesting and informative Q & A interview for the prize, Walsh was asked:

Q: Ireland is such a literary powerhouse, was it supportive of new writers?

The short answer is yes – and not just new writers. Ireland’s a literary powerhouse precisely because we’ve got an Arts Council-supported infrastructure of journals, festivals, indie publishers, etc. That creates a rich writing ecosystem, which is essential to maintaining individual artists and the wider literary culture. Writing is unpredictable magic on the page, but magic always needs concrete structures within which to thrive – that’s what Ireland provides for writers, and that’s why we punch so far above our weight internationally.

The winners of the individual categories will go forward to compete for the title of the overall Irish Book of the Year.  The winner is decided by the An Post Irish Book of the Year judging panel. Watch this space!

In 2022 Sally Hayden won that award for her incredible work of nonfiction My Fourth Time, We Drowned.
The nominations for Irish Book of the Year are the six titles shown below:

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My Place by Sally Morgan

Originally published in 1987, this nonfiction title is both a mini biography (of Sally Morgan’s Great Uncle Arthur, her mother Gladys and her Nan, Daisy) and part memoir.

Sally Morgan, an Australian of Aboriginal descent, begins the book writing about her childhood from the perspective of not knowing her own identity. Thus the reader too, reads from this perspective as Sally recounts events in her life as they happen and as a child would, refrains from analysing or questioning them. Until she finds out.

autobiography memoir australia indigenousThe children at school ask about her skin colour and ethnic origin.

One day, I tackled Mum about it as she washed the dishes.

‘What do you mean “Where do we come from?” ‘

‘I mean what country. The kids at school want to know what country we come from. They reckon we’re not Aussies. Are we Aussies Mum?’

Mum was silent. Nan grunted in a cross sort of way, then got up from the table and walked outside.

‘Come on Mum, what are we?’

‘What do the kids at school say?’

‘Anything. Italian, Greek, Indian.’

‘Tell them you’re Indian.’

‘I got really excited then. ‘Are we really? Indian!’ It sounded so exotic.

‘When did we come here?’ I added.

‘A long time ago’, Mum replied. ‘Now no more questions. You just tell them you’re Indian.’

It was good to finally have an answer and it satisfied our playmates. They could well believe we were Indian, they just didn’t want us pretending we were Aussies when we weren’t.

At home, they live with their mother Gladys and father Bill, who is unwell and sometimes dangerous. He is a WWII war veteran of able body, suffering from what today would be diagnosed as PTSD.

Bill was a strange man, he wasn’t prejudiced against other groups, just Aboriginals. He never liked us having our people to the house. We had to cut ourselves off. I think it was his upbringing.

Bill had spent a lot of his childhood in country towns. I think that moulded his attitudes to Aboriginal people. Down South, Aboriginals were really looked down upon. Bill would have been brought up with that.

Sally Morgan My Place

Photo by Dan on Pexels.com

During those difficult years with her Dad, one of the few things Sally enjoyed about school were the Wednesday afternoon stories, listening to Winnie the Pooh, a character who lived in a world of his own and believed in magic, just like she did. While Pooh was obsessed with honey, Sally was obsessed with drawing.

My drawings were very personal. I hated anyone watching me draw. I didn’t even like people seeing my drawings when they were finished. I drew for myself, not anyone else. One day, Mum asked me why I always drew sad things. I hadn’t realised until then that my drawings were sad. I was shocked to see my feelings glaring up at me from the page. I became even more secretive about anything I drew after that.

Nan also lives with them and as Sally gets to know Nan’s brother Arthur, she learns that they are not Indian, they are of Aboriginal origin. Confronting her grandmother elicits no information at all, she refuses to speak of her past, nor of who her father was and suggests Sally forget about it.

Arthur agrees to tell his story and over a period of 3 months, in his 90’s, she records their conversations and learns about his life and a little more about his sister’s, her Nan. They are the children of an Aboriginal woman and the white stationmaster whose farm they lived and worked on.

They grew up in an era referred to as “living under the Act” when Australia had laws that not only dispossessed Aboriginal people of their land, culture and traditions, but forcibly removed their children from them, did not allow them to raise their children, in effect owned them and treated them similar to slaves. People like Nan grew up under this Act and lived their lives under the effect of the trauma it brought about. The only way they could see to protect their children was to lie about who they were and withhold their heritage from their children and grandchildren.

My Place Indigenous Voices Australia Aboriginal Heritage

Heritage by Sally Morgan (1990)

This story is Sally’s persistent endeavour to find that lineage, those lost family members and that heritage and to find out the story of her grandmother who was too scared to tell it and said she would take her secrets to the grave. To understand what it meant to belong to a heritage.

What did it really mean to be Aboriginal? I’d never lived off the land and been a hunter or gatherer. I’ve never participated in corroborees or heard stories of the Dreamtime. I’d lived all my life in suburbia  and told everyone I was Indian. I hardly knew any Aboriginal people. What did it mean for someone like me?

I absolutely loved every word of it, the way it is told, the close connection this family has to each other, the evidence of a spiritual connection to their ancestry and the spirits, even though they have not been raised with this knowledge.

The real life characters are vividly drawn, the dialogue authentic and the story’s of Arthur, Gladys and Daisy (Nan) beautifully recollected. Though it tells of a terrible time in Australia’s past, of children taken from their mothers, of slavery, abuse, fear and judgement because of skin colour, it is also a legacy for this family, a gift to the Australian nation and the world at large, to be given the opportunity to gain insight into a period of history, little known or heard from this important perspective.

Highly Recommended.

Sally Morgan, Author, Painter

Sally Morgan Indigenous Aboriginal AuthorSally Morgan is one of Australia’s best-known Aboriginal artists and writers.

For as long as she can remember, Sally wanted to paint and write but at school she was discouraged from expressing herself through her art because her teachers failed to see the promise in her individual style. It was not until she researched her family history and discovered her Aboriginal identity that she found meaning in her images and gained the confidence to pick up her paints again.

Sally’s widely-acclaimed first book, My Place, has sold over half a million copies in Australia. Sally Morgan’s second book, Wanamurraganya, was a biography of her grandfather.

My Place won the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission humanitarian award in 1987, the Western Australia Week literary award for non-fiction in 1988, and the 1990 Order of Australia Book Prize.

In 1993, international art historians selected Morgan’s print Outback, as one of 30 paintings and sculptures for reproduction on a stamp, celebrating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Her children’s picture story books include Little Piggies and Hurry Up Oscar. She has collaborated with artist and illustrator Bronwyn Bancroft on several picture books including Dan’s Grampa. Curly and the Fent was written by Sally in collaboration with her children Ambelin, Blaze and Ezekiel.

Sally is the Director at the Centre for Indigenous History and the Arts at the University of Western Australia and lives in Perth.

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The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

Henrietta LacksIn the same way we sometimes debate whether the story should be seen as an entirely separate entity to the writer, so too scientists perceive a sample of cell tissue as separate to the human body it was extracted from.

Except that it is not possible to extract a story from a writer’s imagination without their consent. 

Henrietta Lacks was a young mother in her early thirties when she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer that would quickly take her life. She was fortunate to live close to John Hopkins hospital, built in 1889 as a charity hospital for the sick and poor, to ensure equal access to medical care for all, no matter their race, status, income or any other characteristic that might have otherwise given cause to discriminate in many of the hospitals at the time.

Before undergoing treatment, one of the Doctors took a tissue sample of both her healthy cells and the cancerous cells, as he had been doing to most patients, in an effort to try to find cells that would continue to replicate without dying – searching for the elusive “immortal” cell. It had never been done successfully with human cells.

He succeeded and the cells became known the world over – as he gave them away freely – as HeLa cells, immortal human cells that never died and could be used over and over to test for cures to disease and to observe how cells react to numerous variables, furthering science in ways unimaginable previously.

‘In culture, cancer cells can go on dividing indefinitely, if they have a continual supply of nutrients, and thus are said to be “immortal”. A striking example  is a cell line that has been reproducing in culture since 1951. (Cells of this line are called HeLa cells because their original source was a tumour removed from a woman called Henrietta Lacks.)’

Few paused to ask about the woman behind these cells, what was her story, how her family felt about the multi million dollar research industry that made great strides in science , yes, but also made entrepreneurial types wealthy in the process.

Rebecca Skloot first heard of the HeLa cells in 1988, she was 16-years-old, sitting in her biology class listening to a lecture on cell culture by her instructor Donald Defler. He described the many things that have been learned by being able to grow cells in culture, indicating that much we knew today was due to the proliferation of cells made available thanks to Henrietta Lacks.

‘HeLa cells were one of the most important things that happened to medicine in the last hundred years, ” Defler said.

Henrietta_LacksSkloot made Henrietta the subject of her research for 10 years in the creation of this thorough, respectful account of the life of Henrietta Lacks and her journey to uncover the events of the time within the context of what was the norm in her day.

In much of her location research, when she travelled to meet and interview people, she was accompanied by Henrietta’s daughter Deborah, a passionate woman, unable to find peace in her own life, until she had helped bring her mother’s story to light.

Henrietta Lacks was born in Roanoke, Virginia in August 1920, in a small shack overlooking a busy train depot, where freight cars constantly shunted to and fro. She lived there with her parents and 8 older siblings until 1924, when her mother died giving birth to her tenth child.

Her father lacked the patience for raising children, so took them all to his family in Clover, Virginia, where they farmed tobacco and split the children between those who could take them. Henrietta went to live with her grandfather, Tommy Lacks and her nine-year-old-cousin Day, left there after his birth, by his mother.

‘A twelve year old cousin and midwife named Munchie delivered him, blue as a stormy sky and not breathing. A white doctor came to the home-house with his derby and walking stick, wrote “stillborn” on Day’s birth certificate, then drove his horse-drawn buggy back to town, leaving a cloud of red dust behind.’

Their life there, became one filled with chores, waking at 4 o’clock in the morning, feeding animals, tending the family garden and then off to the tobacco fields to work.

Skloot finds out about her childhood, her marriage to Day, the 10 years they were married and had their children and the diagnosis that she kept from everyone, until it became obvious she was going to die.

It is tragic, sad and yet also a brilliant and informative story and piece of scientific medical history that reads like a novel and brings our awareness to the many who unknowingly make sacrifices for the better of others and that always present aspect of commercial vultures, hovering in the wings, recognising an opportunity to profit.

It rightly reveals and celebrates the life of the little-known woman behind those cells, Henrietta Lacks, who died at a young age from a ravaging cervical cancer, her children’s struggle, the family’s history and all that is kept from them in the name of science.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks was one of my Top 5 Non-Fiction Reads of 2015.

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Tales From The Heart, True Stories From My Childhood by Maryse Condé

I came across Maryse Condé recently via the Man Booker International Prize 2015 list of 10 nominated authors. She is third from the left in the picture below.

FinalistsNot a book prize as such, it is an award conferred on an author who has a significant body of published work, regardless of the original language it was written in, though some of it must have been translated into English.

It is from such long lists the gems are found I say, and having read about all 10 thanks to this excellent Interview: The Finalists Speak in The Guardian, I spotted my potential winner immediately. A winner in the sense that I intend to read a few of their books. The Indian writer Amitav Ghosh was the only author I’d read on this list.

One writer jumped out at me straight away and I pursued her works with little consideration for the pending award result. Maryse Condé didn’t win the prize, the Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai did, a writer whose books intellectuals rave about, but who I’m not sure I’m ready for yet.

Tales Maryse CondéSo I took Maryse Condé’s advice and started by reading this slim volume of essays of her childhood in Guadeloupe, Tales From the Heart, True Stories From My Childhood.

She takes us right back to the beginning, to the day of her birth. Being the youngest of 8 children, the family possessed an extended collective memory and she was fortunate to have heard the story of her birth from other perspectives.

Her appearance was both a source of pride and shame for her then 43-year-old mother and 63-year-old father, proud that her body remained robust enough to support the creation of a child and shame that it publicly displayed evidence of their continued indulgence in carnal pleasures.

The first chapter Family Portrait describes her parents relationship with France:

“For them France was in no way the seat of colonial power. It was truly the Mother Country and Paris, the City of Light that lit up their lives.”

World War II wasn’t considered dark on account of all the dreadful atrocities that occurred:

“but because for seven long years they were deprived of what meant the most to them, their trips to France.”

She recounts an anecdote of a waiter in a café complimenting the family on their excellent French pronunciation, to which her parents felt indignant, considering themselves just as French as a Parisian waiter, even more so because of their higher education, manners and regular travel.

Not understanding why it mattered so, she asked her brother Sandrino:

“Could he explain my parents behaviour?” to which he replied “Papa and Maman are a pair of alienated individuals,”

a mysterious word that would rest a long time in her consciousness until she came to understand it. She realised that not only did they take no pride in their African ancestry, they knew nothing of it, however:

“They believed they were the most brilliant and most intelligent people alive, proof positive of the progress achieved by the Black Race.”

Maryse Condé

In their neighbourhood all the mothers in their circle held a profession and with it contempt for the manual work they believed had been the undoing of their own mothers. They employed a servant who, though she raised 6 children of her own would begin work at 5am to take care of the needs of the family.

We meet her best friend Yvelise, two girls who did everything together, their friendship almost destroyed by the unfortunate intervention of one of her teachers, causing a temporary rupture.

Maryse’s mother Jeanne, knew the life she didn’t wish to lead, nor her children either, she had succeeded in breaking the cycle endured by her mother and grandmother and a good education was key (and perhaps being married to a successful and much older husband). Jeanne was a school teacher, revered and feared in equal measure by those around her. Her eldest son Sandrino and her youngest child Maryse the only two children who weren’t afraid to stand up to her, the others too terrified to challenge her.

On her birthday, her favourite pupils recited compliments, gave her roses, her husband bought her jewellery and the day would culminate with a family play, a short piece of theatre written themselves, in her honour.

‘Beneath her flamboyant appearance, I imagine my mother must have been scared of life, that unbridled mare that had treated her mother and grandmother so roughly…Both of them had been abandoned with their “mountain of truth” and their two eyes to cry with.’

10-year-old Maryse asked if she could read one of her compositions for her mother’s birthday.

‘I had no idea what I wanted to write. I merely sensed that a personality such as my mother’s deserved a scribe.’

If a book of essays can reach a crescendo, this is the moment when we reach it. The moment when Maryse learns that not all lessons come from one’s parents and school teachers, some come from life itself and often when we least expect it.

In the chapter School Days , she is at school (lycée) in Paris when her French teacher asks her to present to the class a book from her island. It is a watershed moment.

‘This well intentioned proposition, however, plunged me into a deep quandary. It was, let us recall, the early fifties. Literature from the French Caribbean had not yet blossomed. Patrick Chamoiseau lay unformed in his mother’s womb and I had never heard the name Aime Césaire. Which writer from my island could I speak about? I resorted to my usual source: Sandrino.’

Sugar Cane Alley

Sugar Cane Alley

Sandrino introduces her to to a treasure. La Rue Case-Negres (Black Shack Alley) by Joseph Zobel and his hero José Hassan. It was made into an award-winning film titled Sugar Cane Alley.

It was her first introduction to a world no one up until that moment had ever mentioned; a world that highlighted slavery, the slave trade, colonial oppression, the exploitation of man by man and colour prejudice.

‘I was scared to reveal how José and I were worlds apart. In the eyes of this Communist teacher, in the eyes of the entire class, the real Caribbean was the one I was guilty of not knowing.’

These glimpses into the more significant and memorable aspects of childhood that shaped the author Maryse Condé are insightful, engaging and honest. Just as her consciousness is awakened, the vignettes finish and leave the reader desperate to know more.

I had intended to read this volume over time, but once I started reading I couldn’t stop, it is almost like reading a coming-of-age novella and at its conclusion, the writers fiction will begin. For Condé’s first novel Hérémakhonon is about a character raised in Guadeloupe, educated in Paris, who then travels to Africa in search of a recognisable past, just as she did.

‘Veronica has spent her childhood in Guadeloupe and, after a period as a student in Paris, wants to escape that island’s respectable black bourgeoisie, which she regards as secretly afraid of its own inferiority. She travels to an unnamed West African state and, while there, seeks an authentically African past with which she will be able to identify.’

Tales From The Heart is an excellent read and an intriguing introduction to the writer and her influences and will certainly make you want to read more of her work. I am very happy I have these three novels on the shelf to follow-up with only I am missing that debut novel which I really want to read now too! Very highly recommended.

Literary Works of Maryse Condé

My Other Reviews

Victoire, My Mother’s Mother 

Segu

The Story of the Cannibal Woman

A Season in Rihata

Click Here to Buy a book by Maryse Condé

 

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The Hare with Amber Eyes, A Hidden Inheritance

The Hare with Amber Eyes

What a story this hare could have told should he have possessed the gift of speech. Instead we see him hunched there, ears pinned back, quivering, stunned by the journey he has taken, the events that have occurred around him, surprised to have survived when so many of his companion artifacts, the more sturdy furnishings, grand paintings and even other ceramics, did not.

The Hare With Amber Eyes is a Japanese netsuke, a miniature sculpture (though they can be wood or ivory) invented in the 17th century, not just as an objet d’art, but a functional kind of toggle to attach to the end of a cord for a pouch that a man might carry, since most of the garments they wore did not contain pockets (the two Japanese characters ne+tsuke mean “root” and “to attach”).

The hare is part of a collection of 264 netsuke purchased by the third son of an aspiring and ambitious Jewish family, Charles Ephrussi (son of Leon).

By 1860 the family had become the greatest grain-exporters in the world. In 1857 the two elder sons were sent out from Odessa to Vienna, the capital city of the sprawling Hapsburg Empire. They bought a huge house in the city centre, and for ten years this was the home to a shifting population of grandparents, children and grandchildren as the family moved backwards and forwards between the two cities. One of the sons, my great-great grandfather Ignace, was tasked with handling Ephrussi business in the Austro-Hungarian Empire from this Vienna base. Paris came next: Leon, the older son, was tasked with establishing the family and business there.

Hare Amber EyesBeing the third son, Charles was spared the obligation of being groomed for the financial sector in the family business (though it may well be he was not cut out for it either as de Waal speculates), preferring to frequent the cafes, salons and a certain boudoir of an older, married woman, attaching himself only ever temporarily to that which he admired – having already lived in three large cities, with his languages, wealth and a passionate interest in the arts, he had plenty of time to indulge his many passions.

It was through his pursuits in the arts, the start of his own collection, mingling with artists, other collectors and art dealers, writers about the arts, that he became interested in Japonisme, a rarity when it began appearing and so desirous. He would purchase a large collection of netsuke from the Parisian art dealer Philippe Sichel who travelled to Japan in 1874.

There is a wonderful connection to Proust throughout this part of the book, one that was a pleasure to discover, without the necessity of having read him, if anything it is an interesting introduction to that group of intellectuals of the 1880’s – 1900’s, Charles Ephrussi himself one of the models for Proust’s depiction of Swann in Swann’s Way.

The author of the book, Edmund de Waal is a descendant of the Ephrussi family and has inherited the 264 netsuke. He is a ceramic potter himself and spent two years studying in Japan, after many years as an apprentice in England. It was in Tokyo, while visiting his Uncle Iggie (another Ignace) that he first laid eyes and hands on the family netsuke that would eventually become his, learning a little of their journey from Paris to Vienna, London and back to Tokyo. Eventually he would spend five years researching what would become this incredible book.

He too, is the third son, though his is no longer a global banking family with the same expectations of its protege. Although he shares similar characteristics to his ancestors, those who did manage to escape the family business and were able to develop that appreciation and eye for a work of art, going beyond casual observation; it is as if he converses with these objects and reads them as if they have living, human qualities.

DeWaalThrough this book, he traces the history of these netsuke and his family, as they rise in ascendancy and are undone by the events leading up to the second world war. We come to know many of the family members and Edmund’s grandmother Elizabeth, a poet and a lawyer is a wonderful woman to learn about, the first woman to receive a doctorate from the University of Vienna and passionate about her poetry, she corresponds regularly with Rilke.

This book was so fascinating and so sensitively handled, it was with an almost palpable sadness that I finished it and felt bereft, wondering where on earth I could go to from here, reading-wise, after such a story.

And then I remembered it has been two years since publication and so I consoled myself with following the work of De Waal, who has been rather prolific since 2010 and I was not surprised to see his recent exhibition A Thousand Hours, showing works behind vitrines, evidence of the longer term effect of his immersion into all that research and study of netsuke and other artifacts his family had preserved.

I leave a link to him commenting on that most recent exhibition and a wonderful article in the Telegraph, in which I learn that De Waal has recently returned from a trip to Jingdezhen, home of the purest clay in China, where porcelain has been made for 1,000 years. This was a research trip for his next book and for a collaboration with the Chinese porcelain collections at the Fitzwilliams Museum for an upcoming exhibition:

De Waal is animated, inspired, gesticulating with his long fingered hands; there is a hum of creativity around him. You can almost see the words fizzing in his head, feel the ideas taking root, springing up out of nothing and arranging themselves in little groups, to form stories, dramas, like his pots.

The Netsuke – photos of some of the Ephrussi collection + family pictures

Article – Edmund de Waal on his new exhibition, A Thousand Hours by Jessamy Calkin

Video – Watch Edmund De Waal transform clay into beautiful works of art