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Books newsletter: a wrap of the latest news and preview of tomorrow’s pages
Maurice J Casey and John Waddell have won the 2026 Michel Déon Prize for non-fiction, the first joint-awarding of the prestigious prize, announced at a prize ceremony in the Royal Irish Academy last night.
Hotel Lux: An Intimate History of Communism’s Forgotten Radicals by Maurice J Casey was published by Footnote Press and The Celtic World: a history by John Waddell was published by Four Courts Press. The prize was presented by Prof Daniel Carey, president of the Royal Irish Academy, and by Eugene Downes, cultural director with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
The ceremony was attended by the French ambassador to Ireland, Céline Place, and featured a lecture by the winner of the 2025 Académie française Michel Déon Prize, Fabrice Humbert. Prof Hastings Donnan, chair of the judging panel, said: “For the first time in its history, the Michel Déon Book Prize has been awarded jointly in 2026 – a compelling testament to the growing strength and vitality of Irish non-fiction.
John Waddell’s The Celtic World masterfully disentangles the complexities of myth, historical evidence and speculation surrounding the language, origins and arts of the ancient Celts, while Maurice Casey’s Hotel Lux offers a gripping and intriguing account of the personal lives of communism’s forgotten radicals. ’ This year’s other shortlisted titles were: Dublin’s Stained Glass by David Caron ; Land Is All That Matters by Myles Dungan ; Monasticism in Ireland, AD 900-1250 by Edel Bhreathnach ; and Rory O’Connor: To Defend the Republic by Gerard Shannon .
Tomorrow’s books pages In The Irish Times tomorrow, Niall Williams tells me about his new Faha story, O Now! Frank Shovlin, author of John McGahern: A Writing Life, explains how he wrote the biography of a very private writer. And there is a Q&A with Shauna Lawless about her Irish historical fantasy series of novels.
Reviews are Rosemary Hennigan on Housing the Nation: Six Generations of the Irish at Home by Lorcan Sirr, and Brittle by Ronan Lyons; Tony Clayton-Lea on music books; Declan Burke on the best new crime fiction; Laurie Hertzel on The Weight of Angels by John Boyne; Sally Hayden on This Cursed Beautiful Land: A Russian Story; Tom Clonan on Ten Steps to Prevent World War Three by Tobias Ellwood; Helena Mulkerns on Doom Painting by AK Blakemore; NJ McGarrigle on The Lost Sportswriter: A Life Up Close with Irish Sporting Greatness by Vincent Hogan; John Boyne on Glorious Monsters by Martina Devlin; Djamel White on Female Life on Planet Earth by Laleh Khadivi; Dean Van Nguyen on The Steps by Sly Stallone; and Desmond Traynor on All About My Mother by Rachel Stirling.
Goldsmiths Prize shortlist Two Irish authors, Doireann Ní Ghríofa and Keith Ridgway, have been shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize 2026 – the £10,000 award that rewards fiction that breaks the mould and extends the possibility of the novel. The six shortlisted novels are: Polly Barton, What Am I, A Deer?
; China Miéville, The Rouse ; Doireann Ní Ghríofa, Said the Dead ; Keith Ridgway, Dooneen ; Aea Varfis-Van Warmelo, Attention Seeking Behaviour ; and Missouri Williams, The Vivisectors . Francis Spufford, chair of judges and professor of creative writing at Goldsmiths, University of London, said: “The Goldsmiths Prize exists to remind us that the novel, as the name suggests, is new.
It may be 300 years old, but in adventurous hands, it still has limitless possibilities as a form. George Eliot described the novel as ‘a crystalline mass that can be poured into any form’, and we haven’t run out of new shapes yet. I and my fellow judges found newness of many different kinds in this year’s submissions. We enjoyed ourselves, and we enjoyed being challenged.
When you see the shortlist, we hope you will too. ” This year’s judging panel are writer and translator Kate Briggs, novelist Hari Kunzru, former Evening Standard literary editor David Sexton and Spufford, author of four novels.
Now in its 14th year, the Goldsmiths Prize was launched in association with the New Statesman in 2013 with the goal of celebrating the creative daring associated with Goldsmiths and to reward fiction from the UK and Ireland that is genuinely novel and embodies the spirit of invention that characterises the genre at its best. Kunzru said: “What the cultural historian Saidiya Hartman has called ‘the violence of the archive’ is both a kind of silence – what is not recorded – and a kind of distortion.
People, particularly marginal people, appear hazily, if at all, in records made in order to discipline or organise them. In Said the Dead, Doireann Ní Ghríofa recovers the forgotten stories of women incarcerated in a Cork asylum in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Reaching backwards into the past, she orchestrates a polyphony of voices, reminding us that fiction has an ethical purpose as well as an aesthetic one.
” Briggs said: “Keith Ridgway’s Dooneen invents its own narrative logic, starting with an exit. Mew steps through the bushes in London and out into an altered Dublin bright with panic, violence, protest, unlikely camaraderies and strange new animations. Mew’s letters to his lover Mootie, pleated with stories and songs, are vivid dispatches from a city under siege in all its weird chaos and frightening, detailed closeness. But sentence by exquisite, bewildered sentence, Dooneen is also a narrative of separation.
‘It is never only one person who feels anything is it, Mootie? ’ Daring to write with sincerity, with sweetness, with a profound love for a person as well as the world and a future that has already foreclosed, Ridgway’s Dooneen is a rare experiment in tone. It couldn’t feel more generative, more novel, or more necessary. ” The winner will be announced at a ceremony at Foyles, Charing Cross Road on November 4th.
Baillie Gifford Prize shortlist Patrick Radden Keefe, best known for Say Nothing, his excavation of the IRA’s murder and disappearance of Jean McConville, is among the six books shortlisted for The Baillie Gifford Prize For Non-Fiction 2026. In London Falling: A Mysterious Death In A Gilded City And A Family’s Search for Truth, Keefe investigates the death of Zac Brettler, a London teenager who was leading a secret life posing as the son of a wealthy Russian oligarch.
Keefe won the prize for Empire Of Pain: The Secret History Of The Sackler Family in 2021. Andrea Wulf’s The Traveller: The Revolutionary Life of George Forster And His Search for Humanity, recounts the life of radical 18th-century naturalist and explorer George Forster. Nicholas Boggs’ Baldwin: A Love Story, is the first big biography of author James Baldwin in three decades.
Matthew Sweet’s The Great Dictator: A Life of Barbara Cartland is a colourful biography of one of the 20th century’s bestselling authors, second only to Agatha Christie. Edmund Richardson’s Alexander: God, King, Man retells the life of Alexander the Great, from insecure young ruler to one of history’s most celebrated conquerors. Anand Gopal’s Days of Love and Rage: A Story of Revolution captures Syria during the 2011 revolution.
Kirsty Lang, chair of judges, said: “This is a charismatic shortlist which I hope will inspire more people to read non-fiction. There is something for everyone: a romantic novelist, a civil rights activist, an eighteenth-century explorer, an ancient king, the Syrian revolution told from the ground up, and a dark portrait of contemporary London.
“It is an eclectic list united by stories of people navigating a world full of conflict as well as hope. At a time when many of us are trying to make sense of a complex and frightening world, non-fiction can help us find our way through. ” The winner will be announced on November 4th.
Cundill History Prize shortlist The Cundill History Prize, one of the world’s leading prizes for a work of history written in English, has announced the three finalists for 2026. Jonathan Cheng, Alexander Lee and Beth Lew-Williams have been selected by an international jury of leading historians and writers, chaired by Emily Greenwood of Harvard University. They are in contention for the prize of $75,000. The other two finalists will each receive an award of $10,000.
The prize is administered by McGill University, and the winner will be announced at the Cundill Festival in Montreal on October 23rd. From the world’s first Jewish ghetto in 16th-century Venice, to the hidden influence of American Christianity on the Kim Dynasty, to anti-Chinese discrimination in the early American west, these books illuminate the violence of segregation and the struggles of those who resisted, and cast new light on a secretive regime.
In a very competitive field, Cheng, Lee and Lew-Williams’ books were selected from a shortlist of eight distinguished titles, including Jill Lepore’s We the People, winner of the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for History, and Sam Dalrymple’s Shattered Lands, a finalist for the 2026 Orwell Prize for Political Writing. Gerald Griffin Competition Joan Cronin, a Kerry-born writer now living in east Cork, has won the 2026 Gerald Griffin Competition for First Adult Fiction for her novel A Haircut in September.
One of the judges, Vivienne McKechnie, made the announcement at The People’s Museum of Limerick, praising “a caring and compassionate novella and was a deserved winner”. Cronin is a former social worker, psychotherapist and lecturer at University College Cork. Her book explores the emotional complexities of family, memory and self-discovery. Much to her sister Babe’s resentment, Tessa takes a holiday in Greece just as family affairs demand attention.
Royal Society Trivedi Science Book Prize Kit Chapman has won the 2026 Royal Society Trivedi Science Book Prize, for The Age of Alchemy: How Early Innovators Shaped Modern Chemistry . His book looks at the history of alchemy as an essential precursor to the creation of modern chemistry.
It is at once a wonderfully entertaining globe-trotting narrative in the present day, as well as comprised of completely fascinating case studies throughout history, all driven by the author’s insatiable excitement and enthusiasm for its subject matter and his appreciation of a good story. 2026 BBC National Short Story Award Edinburgh-based writer Cherise Saywell has won the 2026 BBC National Short Story Award for Ditto, a compelling story about a child’s conflicting loyalties and moment of bravery when violence erupts in his house. Australian-born Saywell was previously shortlisted in 2023.
The award is one of the most prestigious for a single short story, with the winning author receiving £15,000, and the shortlisted authors £600 each. Saywell beat a strong all-woman shortlist including 2021 BBC NSSA winner and five-time shortlistee Lucy Caldwell, multi-award winning Irish writer Caoilinn Hughes, playwright and novelist Laura Beatty, and Merryn Glover, a Kathmandu-born writer who lives in Scotland.
Saywell said: “I wanted to find a way to write about how children experience violence, when they have no words for the things they are experiencing ... They feel love and fear and responsibility all at the same time but have no name for what’s happening around them. ” Irish publisher takes on Trump Full Set has acquired Spectacle: Donald Trump’s Chaos Machine by Scott Lucas for its 2027 current affairs list.
Publisher Blathnaid Healy acquired world rights in all languages directly from the author. Lucas is professor of international politics at the Clinton Institute at University College Dublin, and professor emeritus of international politics at the University of Birmingham. An Alabama exile in Europe, he lived in Britain for 40 years before relocating to Ireland in 2024. Lucas said: “For more than a decade I have watched a showman damage the US and the world.
I wrote this book hoping we can replace a spectacle of destruction with a spectacle of decency. ” Healy said: “Trump generates rivers of news every day. Bending and shaping narrative at every turn. Scott’s perspective as an American in Europe, a long-observing journalist and an international relations expert uniquely positions him to cut through the chaos of this unorthodox president.
” Nero Book Awards The 2026 judges for the Nero Book Awards have been announced. This year’s panels include BBC Radio 4’s Adam Rutherford, RTÉ broadcaster Rick O’Shea and Tracy Chevalier, author of Girl with A Pearl Earring. The line-up also features Caroline Carpenter, children’s editor and deputy features editor for The Bookseller; Francesca Brown, freelance books journalist for Stylist; Sharon Nightingale, buying manager at WHSmith, and Aisha Bushby, award-winning children’s author, known for A Pocketful of Stars.
The judges will each select four titles in their category – creating a 16-strong shortlist – before choosing an overall winner. The four category winners will then compete for the Nero Gold Prize, awarded by a final judging panel to the overall book of the year. The Nero Gold Prize winner will receive £30,000, while category winners will receive £5,000 each.
Bookshop of the Year Twelve bookshops have been longlisted for the Bookshop of the Year category at this year’s Irish Book Awards. In alphabetical order, they are: Bantry Bookshop, Co Cork; Books at One, Louisburgh, Co Mayo; Bridge Books Dromore, Co Down; Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop, Galway; Genius Juniors, Co Clare; Leaf and Bower, Co Cork; O’Mahony’s Booksellers, Limerick; Philip’s Bookshop, Mallow, Co Cork; Tales for Tadpoles, Bray, Co Wicklow; The Book Centre, Waterford; The Bookshelf, Newry; Woodbine Books, Kilcullen, Co Kildare.
The shortlist will be revealed on October 22nd, with the overall winner announced at the book awards on December 1st.
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