Dublin Literary Award 2025

Set in a remote Newfoundland outport, The Adversary explores a bitter rivalry between two men that comes to define an entire community. Crummey writes with restraint and precision, allowing small gestures and silences to carry enormous weight. The novel examines pride, grievance, and the slow accumulation of resentment. Nature looms large, indifferent to human conflict. Moral lines blur as loyalty and stubbornness harden into fate. A quiet, powerful study of how opposition shapes identity.

Percival Everett reimagines Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of Jim, here reclaimed as James. The novel is sharp, funny, and devastating, exposing the violence and absurdity of racism with moral clarity. Everett balances satire with moments of profound humanity. Language and storytelling become tools of survival and resistance. The familiar narrative is transformed into something urgent and contemporary. A brilliant act of literary reclamation.

North Woods traces centuries of human and nonhuman life in a single patch of New England forest. Mason experiments with form and voice, allowing time to fold in on itself. The novel explores ownership, memory, and ecological change. Human dramas appear briefly before dissolving back into the land. The writing is lyrical and patient. A quietly ambitious meditation on place and impermanence.

This spare novel follows three men returning to a river where a tragic accident once occurred. Almada’s prose is restrained, allowing grief and guilt to surface gradually. The landscape mirrors emotional unease. Time feels suspended, heavy with memory. The novel resists explanation or catharsis. A quiet, devastating exploration of loss and masculinity.

Set in a near-future Ireland sliding into authoritarianism, Prophet Song follows a mother struggling to protect her family as society collapses. Lynch’s prose is relentless and immersive, mirroring the claustrophobia of life under surveillance. Ordinary life is slowly stripped away. The novel refuses distance or comfort. Fear accumulates with crushing inevitability. A harrowing warning about how democracies fail.

This unsettling novel explores life inside a spiritual collective that promises purity and belonging. Blees writes in a deceptively calm voice that gradually reveals coercion and control. Individual identity dissolves into group ideology. Small transgressions carry severe consequences. The narrative examines how language can manipulate belief. A chilling, precise study of conformity.