a whole new world

The shortlist for this year's Women's Prize for Fiction was announced this morning. Launched in 1996, and formerly the Orange Prize, the Women's Prize for Fiction is awarded to a female author who, in the opinion of the judges, has written the best, eligible full-length novel in English. The prize is the UK’s only annual book award for fiction written by a woman.

Right: Shortlist titles. Click image to view larger version.

Women fiction writers have been getting a lot of good press these past two days, which is good to see. Today's announcement follows fast on the heels of yesterday's by literary magazine Granta of its once-in-a-decade list of the 20 Best of Young British Novelists(aged under 40), a list dominated for the first time by women. Read Granta list of top young novelists is female-dominated and international (Guardian) Read more »

The 16th Annual Sir John T. Gilbert Commemorative Lecture, titled "Dublin after Dark: Glimpses of Life in an Early Modern City", and given by Maighréad Ní Mhurchadha, Local Historian, on Wednesday 23rd January 2013, in the Dublin City Library & Archive, Pearse Street, Dublin 2.

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I bet most people are somewhat familiar with the film 'Out of Africa' (1985), starring Meryl Streep and Robert Redford, and which is based loosely on an autobiography by Karen Blixen, it first published in 1937. The setting is British East Africa, better known today as Kenya, a point which leads me nicely on to the first crime novel I want to tell you about here, it too based in Kenya. As you might by now have guessed this post does not include any books with a European setting. But change is good, no?

'A Guide to the Beasts of East Africa'  is the only title I have yet read by Nicholas Drayson, and it is the sequel to 'A Guide to the Birds of East Africa'. The first thing to say about it is that if you like the No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency books (McCall Smith), you should like this. Which I did, although I was initially slow to warm to it, probably because of its slower than what I am used to pace. But it has humour, style and interesting characters in its favour, and all helped to draw me more and more into the book with each page turning. The story like I said is based in Kenya, and around a number of different events and characters; Mr. Malik and his planning of the Asadi Club's annual safari, his daughter's impending marriage, a threat to the club's very existence, theft, political corruption, and the mystery surrounding a seventy-year old unsolved murder. The question: can Mr. Malik, who is of course a bit of a sleuth together with the help of lawyer Tiger Singh, unravel the mystery and save the day? An entertaining read this, I think you will like it. Regrettably, we do not have this title in our (Dublin City) libraries (horror!), for that I must apologise, I will ask for it to be purchsed. Read more »

View Strumpet City Image Gallery

Strumpet City is one of the great Dublin novels. Focusing on the 1913 Lock-Out, its panoramic scope extends from the docks and slums of inner-city Dublin to the bourgeois domiciles of Kingstown. These images from the Dublin City Council Photographic Collection show the city as it was over fifty years later. Although the harrowing conditions Plunkett wrote about had largely vanished, the ‘glorified kip of a city’ he described remained recognisable throughout the twentieth century. Read more »

10 novels have been shortlisted for the International IMPAC DUBLIN Literary Award. The list includes City of Bohane by Irish author, Kevin Barry, five novels in translation from Japan, Iceland, Norway, The Netherlands and France, 1 British and 3 American novels.

The Award is worth €100,000 to the winner and is the world’s most valuable annual literary award for a single work of fiction published in English.

The shortlisted titles, announced by The Lord Mayor of Dublin Cllr. Naoise ÓMuirí, Patron of the Award, in Dublin today are (with links to catalogue entries): Read more »

The Dublin City Library @ Parnell Square Cultural Quarter. The Dublin City Library will be a new kind of city library for the citizens of Dublin. A window on the world of knowledge and culture, a centre of learning and literature, a commune of research and reading and a hub of ideas and creativity.