Irish Fiction Now
Contemporary Irish fiction has moved to reflect the changes in the society that produces it. There are fewer novels set in the countryside and more urban fiction is being written. The last few years have also seen a rise in the volume of popular fiction being published across a range of genres from romantic novels to hardboiled detective stories set in New York. Some notable names are John Banville, Sebastian Barry, Maeve Binchy, Dermot Bolger, John Boyne, Eoin Colfer, Seamus Deane, Roddy Doyle, Anne Enright, Jennifer Johnston, Patrick McCabe, Mike McCormack, John McGahern, Joseph O'Connor, Keith Ridgway, Colm Tóibín, William Trevor, and William Wall. There are many upcoming writers including Gerard Beirne and Claire Keegan. There has also been an increasing emphasis on writing by women which found concrete expression in the founding of the Arlen House publishing venture.
Fiction by Irish authors has won considerable acclaim recently with two winners of the Booker Prize: John Banville's The Sea in 2005 and Anne Enright's The Gathering in 2007. Several more authors, including Colm Tóibín, Patrick McCabe, and Sebastian Barry have all been shortlisted twice. Barry lost out on the Booker Prize in 2008 but was awarded the Costa Book Prize for his novel The Secret Scripture in 2009. J. G. Farrell won the award twice for his novels Troubles and The Siege of Krishnapur (published in 1970 and 1973, respectively).
Writers such as John Boyne, Maeve Binchy, Marian Keyes, and Cecilia Ahern have had considerable commercial success not only in Ireland but also internationally.
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—Bernadette Devlin (b. 1947)
“If one doubts whether Grecian valor and patriotism are not a fiction of the poets, he may go to Athens and see still upon the walls of the temple of Minerva the circular marks made by the shields taken from the enemy in the Persian war, which were suspended there. We have not far to seek for living and unquestionable evidence. The very dust takes shape and confirms some story which we had read.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)