Kevin Barry Wins International Impac Dublin Award
June 12, 2013
The International Impac Award has been given to Kevin Barry of Limerick Ireland for his first novel, City of Bahone. The £100,000 award is the largest offered for a single novel published in English. Naoise O. Muiri, Lord Mayor of Dublin and Patron of the Award, praised the book, which takes place forty years in the future, saying, “City of Bahone is a vivid, atmospheric portrayal of a city in the West of Ireland set in the future but mired in the past. The highly original cast of characters are at once flamboyant and malevolent, speaking in a vernacular like no other.”
City of Bahone made it onto a shortlist from among more than 153 nominated titles. One judge said of the book: “Kevin Barry’s Ireland of 2053 is a place you may not want to be alive in but you’ll certainly relish reading about. This is not a future of shiny technology but one in which history turns in circles and quirks an eyebrow at the idea of ‘progress’.” Michel Houellebecq of France, Haruki Murakami of Japan, and Karen Russell and Julie Otsuka of the US were among the ten finalists. Barry is the third Irish author to win the prize. It was awarded to Colm Tóibín in 2006 for The Master and to Colum McCann in 2011 for Let the Great World Spin.
This prize is unique in that nominations are made by public libraries around the world. Barry said of winning, "The fact that this award originates with the libraries is what makes it very special for me – libraries are where we learn that we can live our lives through books."
