Suzette Mayr’s The Sleeping Car Porter and Emma Donoghue’s Haven are among the six books shortlisted for the 2024 Dublin Literary Award.
The €100,000 ($147,178 Cdn) prize annually recognizes the best work of fiction in English from anywhere in the world. It is the most valuable award in the world for a single work of fiction published in English. This year, the prize celebrates its 29th year in operation.
The other books on the shortlist are Old God’s Time by Irish writer Sebastian Barry, Solenoid by Romanian author Mircea Cărtărescu, translated by Sean Cotter, If I Survive You by American writer Jonathan Escoffery and Praiseworthy by Waanyi writer Alexis Wright.
Mayr’s The Sleeping Car Porter is about Baxter, a closeted queer Black man who works as a sleeping car porter on a train in 1929. He smiles and tries to be invisible to the passengers, but he wants to save up and go to dentistry school. On one particular trip out west, the train is stalled and Baxter finds a postcard of two gay men. The postcard reawakens memories and desires and ultimately puts his job in jeopardy.
The Sleeping Car Porter also won the 2022 Scotiabank Giller Prize.
Mayr is a poet and novelist based in Calgary. She is also the author of the novels Dr. Edith Vane and the Hares of Crawley Hall, Monoceros, Moon Honey, The Widows and Venous Hum. Monoceros won the ReLit Award, the City of Calgary W. O. Mitchell Book Prize and made the 2011 Scotiabank Giller Prize longlist.
The Next Chapter12:17Suzette Mayr on The Sleeping Car Porter
Ryan B. Patrick interviews Suzette Mayr on her 2022 Scotiabank Giller Prize- winning novel, The Sleeping Car Porter.
Donoghue is shortlisted for her novel Haven set in 7th-century Ireland in a time of plague and terror. A scholar priest named Artt has a dream in which God tells him to leave the sinful world behind. With two monks — young Trian and old Cormac — he rows down the River Shannon in search of an isolated spot in which to found a monastery. Drifting out into the Atlantic, the three men find the steep, bare island known today as Skellig Michael. In such a place, what will survival mean?
Donoghue is an Irish Canadian writer. Her books include the novels Learned by Heart, Landing, Room, Frog Music, The Wonder, The Pull of the Stars and the children’s book The Lotterys Plus One. Room was an international bestseller and was adapted into a critically acclaimed film starring Brie Larson.
31:03Emma Donoghue on setting her new novel Haven on a desolate island in the North Atlantic
Author Emma Donoghue has an uncanny talent for revealing humanity in the most inhumane of circumstances. She joined Tom Power to tell us why she chose an inhospitable rock in the middle of the ocean as the setting for her new novel, Haven, and gave us a sneak peek into her latest book-to-film adaptation, The Wonder.
The shortlist was selected by a jury comprised of author and translator Anton Hur, literature professor Daniel Medin, literature professor Lucy Collins, poet and translator Ingunn Snædal and author and journalist Irenosen Okojie.
The jury is chaired by Chris Morash, a professor at Trinity College Dublin, who does not vote.
The winner will be revealed on May 23.
Last year’s winner was Marzahn, Mon Amour by German author Katja Oskamp and translator Jo Heinrich.
Two Canadians have won the prize since its 1996 inception: Alistair MacLeod won in 2001 for No Great Mischief and Rawi Hage won in 2008 for De Niro’s Game.