AN IRISH author’s debut novel has been longlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize literary award.
Colin Barrett’s Wild Houses is one of 13 novels up for the prestigious accolade, with judges describing the work as ‘a slow-burn study of character and fate that’s also an edge-of-your-seat thriller’.
Co. Mayo native Barrett, who has previously released two collections of short stories, will be hoping Wild Houses makes the shortlist when it is announced next month.
The story — one of three debut novels on this year’s longlist — contrasts an idyllic view of rural Ireland with a darker side of the Emerald Isle.
Set over three days against the backdrop of the Salmon Festival in Ballina, Co. Mayo, the story centres on a drugs feud that spills over into violence and an ugly ultimatum.
Booker judges hailed the work as ‘a propulsive, darkly comic and superlatively written account of frustration and misadventure in a small Irish town’.
“Violence and farce mingle in a novel that feels as sharp, funny and bitingly bittersweet as life,” they added.
Praise
Wild Houses has received widespread acclaim, with the book seeing Barrett named by the Observer as one of the 10 best debut novelists of 2024.
However, Barrett — the only Irish writer on this year’s Booker longlist — is no stranger to plaudits.
His first book, the short story collection Young Skins, won the Guardian First Book Award, the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature.
One of the stories in the book, Calm with Horses, was adapted into an award-winning 2019 film of the same name starring Barry Keoghan and Cosmo Jarvis.
Barrett’s second short story collection, Homesickness, made the New York Times 100 Notable Books of the Year and was a Book of the Year in Oprah Daily and the Irish Times.
The shortlist of six books for this year’s Booker Prize will be announced on September 16, with each writer receiving £2,500 and a specially-bound edition of their book.
The winner, who will be announced on November 12, will receive £50,000 and a trophy named Iris named after Dublin-born Booker Prize winner Iris Murdoch.
As well as Murdoch, the prize has also been won by Roddy Doyle, John Banville, Anne Enright and Anna Burns.
Meanwhile, Co. Limerick writer Paul Lynch, one of four Irish writers on last year’s longlist, won lthe 2023 award for his novel Prophet Song,