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About the Dublin Literary Award
The Dublin Literary Award, established in 1996, stands as one of the most prestigious international literary prizes. Managed by Dublin City Council, it aims to celebrate and promote excellence in world literature. What sets this award apart is its unique criteria: books are nominated by public libraries from around the globe, emphasizing the profound role of libraries in fostering literary culture worldwide. The prize is open to novels written in any language, which are then translated into English, thereby broadening readership and cultural exchange. With an impressive monetary prize, the award not only honors authors but also recognizes the crucial role of translators in making global literature accessible.
Why it's Exciting for Public Libraries
For public libraries, the Dublin Literary Award is an exciting beacon of literary discovery and community engagement. By participating in the nomination process, libraries amplify the voices of diverse authors and stories that might otherwise go unnoticed. Winning titles often become focal points for book clubs, reading groups, and literary events, enriching the cultural tapestry of local communities. Moreover, the award enhances the libraries' mission as guardians of knowledge and culture, underscoring their pivotal role in promoting literature beyond borders. As libraries champion the selected novels, they stimulate dialogue, encourage reading diversity, and cultivate a deeper appreciation for literature among their patrons. Ultimately, the Dublin Literary Award not only recognizes outstanding literary achievement but also galvanizes libraries worldwide as vibrant hubs of literary discovery and exchange.
DC Public Library and the Dublin Literary Award
On and off since 1998, DC Public Library has participated in the Dublin Literary Award nomination process and is honored to have had four of our titles make the Award's shortlist during their nomination year. In an attempt to give the DC Public Library community a peek behind the curtain, we're sharing a few of this year's DC Public library considerations. Put forth by staff, there's a big chance you've come across these titles in a DCPL book club or program! If that is true for you and you'd like to help make a case for either of our shortlisted titles (What You Are Looking For Is in the Library and Still Alive) to be considered for our final nomination, drop us a note to let us know the impact the title has had on your literary journey.
Our 2025 Nomination Considerations
What You Are Looking For Is in the Library - (Shortlist)
What are you looking for? So asks Tokyo’s most enigmatic librarian. For Sayuri Komachi is able to sense exactly what each visitor to her library is searching for and provide just the book recommendation to help them find it.
A restless retail assistant looks to gain new skills, a mother tries to overcome demotion at work after maternity leave, a conscientious accountant yearns to open an antique store, a recently retired salaryman searches for newfound purpose.
In Komachi’s unique book recommendations they will find just what they need to achieve their dreams. What You Are Looking For Is in the Library is about the magic of libraries and the discovery of connection. This inspirational tale shows how, by listening to our hearts, seizing opportunity and reaching out, we too can fulfill our lifelong dreams. Which book will you recommend?
Author: Michiko Aoyama
Translator: Alison Watts
Date Published: 9/5/2023
Original Language: Japanese
What staff had to say
Great short stories of book lovers and a magical librarian! (We're all magical librarians!)"
Still Alive - (Shortlist)
A hero's journey through a dying empire. On the Road for a beaten generation. After V meets Lex, a butch painter, at an underground punk show, they enter a multi-year relationship that ranges from Portland, Oregon, to New York City, and finally Los Angeles, with V’s family of origin ever interjecting with dysfunction and neediness. Her brother has retreated into a hodgepodge of Eastern religiosity and their mother’s addictions are worsening. Meanwhile her father is busy building a new family, as sunny as V’s childhood was grim. Leroy, V’s gay best friend, has chosen rural peace, but V can’t find the same satisfaction – anywhere. Ever in search of love, meaning, and temp work, V hurtles across the US, resisting the store-bought narratives of mainstream life to create a freedom all her own.
With heady pacing, a recursive structure, and sharp prose, STILL ALIVE renders the much-maligned adult millennial experience with affection and profundity. In this story, as in life, there’s no cure for living.
Author: Lj Pemberton
Date Published: 2/8/2024
Original Language: English
What staff had to say
"This is solidly one of the best books I've read in a long time. Pemberton is magic with words. She explores what it means to be an elder Millennial queer in a world that offers only disappointments. There are certainly many coming-of-age books, but Pemberton captures moments in time 15 to 20 years ago that speak to specifically today. She is a voice of her generation."
Exiled Shadow
In this vibrant mosaic of voices, sources, and stories, the protagonist, known only as the Nomadic Misanthrope, leaves communist Romania and is reunited with his friend Gunther, an unrepentant Marxist exiled in Berlin. Their meeting sparks a spirited dialogue that endures throughout the Nomadic Misanthrope’s subsequent decades in the United States. At the center of the plot is the figure of the shadow—the insubstantial shape of the exile, the wandering Jew, the death camp survivor, the individual under totalitarianism, the dark side of the Jungian personality—a figure that calls into question the boundaries of the human condition.
Recalling the beloved nineteenth-century German tale of Peter Schlemihl, the man who sold his shadow for a bag of gold, this is Norman Manea’s most daring work yet: an intimate record of alienation and endurance.
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. When the state came looking for a deaf boy to institutionalize him, it was Chona and Nate Timblin, the Black janitor at Moshe’s theater and the unofficial leader of the Black community on Chicken Hill, who worked together to keep the boy safe.
As these characters’ stories overlap and deepen, it becomes clear how much the people who live on the margins of white, Christian America struggle and what they must do to survive. When the truth is finally revealed about what happened on Chicken Hill and the part the town’s white establishment played in it, McBride shows us that even in dark times, it is love and community—heaven and earth—that sustain us.
Author: James McBride
Date Published: 8/8/2023
Original Language: English
What staff had to say
"This book was so entertaining and heartwarming. James McBride is so good at fleshing out his characters who are so intriguing in their complexity. This author is not writing a book for black or Jewish or any particular segment of people: he’s writing about all humans who have complex personalities, experiences, interests, strengths, struggles and connections with each other."
The Book of Love
Late one night, Laura, Daniel, and Mo find themselves beneath the fluorescent lights of a high school classroom, almost a year after disappearing from their hometown, the small seaside community of Lovesend, Massachusetts, having long been presumed dead. Which, in fact, they are.
With them in the room is their previously unremarkable high school music teacher, who seems to know something about their disappearance—and what has brought them back again. Desperate to reclaim their lives, the three agree to the terms of the bargain their music teacher proposes. They will be given a series of magical tasks; while they undertake them, they may return to their families and friends, but they can tell no one where they’ve been. In the end, there will be winners and there will be losers.
But their resurrection has attracted the notice of other supernatural figures, all with their own agendas. As Laura, Daniel, and Mo grapple with the pieces of the lives they left behind, and Laura’s sister, Susannah, attempts to reconcile what she remembers with what she fears, these mysterious others begin to arrive, engulfing their community in danger and chaos, and it becomes imperative that the teens solve the mystery of their deaths to avert a looming disaster.
Author: Kelly Link
Date Published: 2/13/2024
Original Language: English
What staff had to say
Long Island
Eilis Lacey is Irish, married to Tony Fiorello, a plumber and one of four Italian American brothers, all of whom live in neighboring houses on a cul-de-sac in Lindenhurst, Long Island, with their wives and children and Tony’s parents, a huge extended family. It is the spring of 1976 and Eilis is now forty with two teenage children. Though her ties to Ireland remain stronger than those that hold her to her new land and home, she has not returned in decades.
One day, when Tony is at work an Irishman comes to the door asking for Eilis by name. He tells her that his wife is pregnant with Tony’s child and that when the baby is born, he will not raise it but instead deposit it on Eilis’s doorstep. It is what Eilis does—and what she refuses to do—in response to this stunning news that makes Tóibín’s novel so riveting and suspenseful.
Author: Colm Tóibín
Date Published: 5/7/2024
Original Language: English
What staff had to say
"Long Island is a restrained domestic drama with great dialogue and heartbreakingly human characters. It's special because it is a sequel to a much-loved novel (Brooklyn) that actually works! The plot skips over the part where everyone is married and happy with children, picking up nearly two decades later after a devastating betrayal. I couldn't put it down."
Chime In!
Have you read one of the two shortlisted titles this year and think it should be our final nomination? Let us know! Share what the book meant to you and why you think it's a work of literary merit.