The Greatest Books Since 1990 Written by Irish Authors
-
1 . Amongst Women by John McGahern
Amongst Women is a novel by the Irish author John McGahern (1934-2006). The novel tells the story of Michael Moran, a bitter, ageing Irish Republican Army (IRA) veteran, and his tyranny over his wi...
-
2 . Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha by Roddy Doyle
Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha (1993) is a novel by Irish writer Roddy Doyle. It won the Booker Prize in 1993. The story is about a 10 year old boy and events that happen within his age group. He also has t...
-
3 . The Gathering by Anne Enright
The Gathering is the fourth novel by Irish author Anne Enright. It won the 2007 Man Booker Prize. The novel traces the narrator's inner journey, setting out to derive meaning from past and prese...
-
4 . The Sea by John Banville
The Sea (2005) is the eighteenth novel by Irish author John Banville. The story is told by Max Morden, a self-aware, retired art historian attempting to reconcile himself to the deaths of those ...
-
5 . The Van by Roddy Doyle
Jimmy Rabbitte Senior pulls himself out of a mid-life crisis when he purchases a greasy fish-and-chip van and sells grub to Dublin's drunk and hungry during the heady days of Ireland's triumphs in ...
- Google -
6 . Days Without End by Sebastian Barry
Days Without End is the seventh novel by Sebastian Barry and is set during the Indian Wars and American Civil War.
-
7 . The Master by Colm Tóibín
The Master is a novel by Irish writer Colm Tóibín. It is his fifth novel and it was shortlisted for the 2004 Booker Prize and received the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the Stonewall B...
-
8 . The Butcher Boy by Patrick McCabe
The Butcher Boy is a 1992 novel by Patrick McCabe. Set in a small town in Ireland in the early 1960s, it tells the story of Francis "Francie" Brady, a schoolboy who retreats into a violent fantasy ...
-
9 . Milkman by Anna Burns
Milkman is a novel written by Anna Burns. It won the 2018 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, the first time a Northern Irish writer has been awarded the prize. It also won the 2018 National Book Critics...
-
10 . City of Bohane by Kevin Barry
City of Bohane is the debut novel by Ireland's Kevin Barry. The book is set in the year 2053, in a world with minimal technology. It received largely positive reviews and won the 2013 Internation...
-
11 . The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne
'Some things are just sitting there, minding their own business, waiting to be discovered. Like America. And other things are probably better off left alone' Nine-year-old Bruno has a lot of things...
- Google -
12 . Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer
Twelve-year-old Artemis is a millionaire, a genius-and above all, a criminal mastermind. But Artemis doesn't know what he's taken on when he kidnaps a fairy, Captain Holly Short of the LEPrecon Uni...
- Google -
-
14 . Let the Great World Spin: A Novel by Colum McCann
In the dawning light of a late-summer morning, the people of lower Manhattan stand hushed, staring up in disbelief at the Twin Towers. It is August 1974, and a mysterious tightrope walker is runnin...
- Google -
15 . The House Of Splendid Isolation by Edna O'Brien
Josie, the ailing, elderly inhabitant of an Irish country mansion, dwells in the shadowy world of remembered pain and loneliness. McGreevy, the terrorist, reintroduces the possibility of compassion...
- Google -
-
17 . Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell
Hamnet is a 2020 novel by Maggie O'Farrell. It is a fictional account of Shakespeare's son, Hamnet, who died at age 11 in 1596. It won the 2020 Women's Prize for Fiction and the Fiction Prize at th...
-
18 . The Heather Blazing by Colm Toibin
Eamon Redmond is a judge in Ireland’s high court, a completely legal creature who is just beginning to discover how painfully unconnected he is from other human beings. With effortless fluency, Col...
- Google -
19 . The Green Road by Anne Enright
The Green Road is a 2015 novel by Irish author Anne Enright. It is the sixth novel by Enright and concerns the lives of the Madigan family - four children and their mother Rosaleen. A critical succ...
-
20 . Human Chain by Seamus Heaney
Human Chain (2010) is the twelfth and final poetry collection by Seamus Heaney, who received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature. It won the Forward Poetry Prize Best Collection 2010 award, the Iris...
-
21 . That They May Face the Rising Sun by John McGahern
Joe and Kate Ruttledge, have come to rural Ireland from London in search of a different life. In passages of beauty and truth, the drama of a year in their lives and those of the memorable characte...
-
22 . The Statement by Brian Moore
The hunt is on for an elusive Nazi war criminal in this “absorbing intellectual thriller that keeps you guessing . . . until the final page” (The New York Times). For four decades Pierre Brossard h...
- Google -
23 . The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry
The Secret Scripture is a 2008 novel written by Irish playwright Sebastian Barry.
-
25 . The Lesser Bohemians by Eimear McBride
The Lesser Bohemians is the second novel by Eimear McBride. It was published on 1 September 2016 and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 2017.
-
26 . District and Circle by Seamus Heaney
District and Circle (2006) is a collection of poems written by Irish Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney. It is the poet's most recent volume, published forty years after his debut Death of a Naturalist, ...
-
27 . The Hand That First Held Mine by Maggie O'Farrell
Lexie Sinclair is plotting an extraordinary life for herself. Hedged in by her parents' genteel country life, she plans her escape to London. There, she takes up with Innes Kent, a magazine editor ...
- Google -
-
29 . The Spirit Level by Seamus Heaney
The Spirit Level (1996) is a collection of poems written by Irish Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney. Featuring such poems as "Two Lorries", it won the Whitbread Prize for Literature.
