This year's Impac award field is filled with literary heavyweights. Who might take home the hundred thousand euro prize?
Of the 137 books in the running, six were penned by Irish authors. Considering that the Impac award is an Irish award, you'd think they could have found a few more for the sake of pride, but there you are. The top seller in the Irish category is John Boyne's The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, a Holocaust novel that looks at Auschwitz through the eyes of a nine-year-old boy who wonders about the people on the other side of a tall fence, all clad in striped pyjamas.
An outstanding novel, to be sure, but Mr. Boyne is up against the likes of Thomas Pynchon's Against the Day and Martin Amis's House of Meetings. Margaret Atwood, Michael Collins, and Vikram Chandra are also on the long list.
Librarians select the books for the Impac award, with a hope to encourage people to read some high quality fiction that may not feature in some best seller list. In five months time, the field will be narrowed to the short list, and then the bookies will be taking bets.
Pick up some of the listed novels and have a good read. That's a guaranteed win.
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