International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award

"Well, I have to stay sober all day because there's a dinner this evening... so I'll start drinking about 11 o'clock tonight and I don't know when I'll stop." - Colm Toibin

Colm Tóibín is the first Irish writer to win the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. In this the 11th year of the Award, the Lord Mayor, Councillor Catherine Byrne announced that Tóibin’s novel The Master has won the €100,000 prize – the world’s richest literary prize for a single work of fiction published in English. The International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award is administered by Dublin City Public Libraries and sponsored by IMPAC (Improved Management Productivity and Control) an international company with its headquarters based in Florida, USA.

The Master was chosen by an international panel of judges, having been nominated by 17 libraries worldwide.

The Master, Colm Toibin (Picador imprint)“It’s an honour to present such a fine writer as Colm Tóibín, with the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award - the largest and most international prize of its kind”, says Lord Mayor of Dublin, Cllr Catherine Byrne. “Libraries from all corners of the globe nominate entries and the Award is open to books written in any language. The Award is a Dublin City Council initiative and a partnership between Dublin City Council and IMPAC, a productivity improvement company operating in over 50 countries. The Award is administered by Dublin City Public Libraries”.

The 10 shortlisted titles included three Irish authors and were selected from a 132 novels, nominated by 180 libraries from 43 countries and from 124 cities; 32 titles were in translation, covering 15 non-English languages.

The shortlisted titles were:
Graceland by Chris Abani
Maps for Lost Lovers by Nadeem Aslam
Havoc, In Its Third Year by Ronan Bennett (Irish author)
The Closed Circle by Jonathan Coe
An Altered Light by Jens Christian Grøndahl - translated from the Danish by Anne Born
The Swallows of Kabul by Yasmina Khadra - translated from the French by John Cullen
Breaking the Tongue by Vyvyane Loh
Don’t Move by Margaret Mazzantini - translated from the Italian by John Cullen (Mazzantini was born in Dublin)
The Master by Colm Tóibín
The Logogryph by Thomas Wharton

The Master, Colm Toibin (Scribner imprint)Judges’ comment: “In The Master, Colm Tóibín captures the exquisite anguish of a man who circulated in the grand parlours and palazzos of Europe, who was astonishingly alive and vibrant in his art, and yet whose attempts at intimacy inevitably failed him and those he tried to love. It is a powerful account of the hazards of putting the life of the mind before affairs of the heart.
“This probing portrayal of Henry James is not merely an outstanding narrative. In crisp, modulated writing, it subtly balances a range of devices that leave the reader in no doubt about the accomplishment of this work. For its deftly excavated psychology of the Jamesian childhood and youth, for its quiet revelations of the artist's journey and the emotional and material necessities accompanying this, for the melancholic undertone which surfaces through the probing landscape of this writer's life, 'The Master' is, and will continue to be a work of novelistic art: its preoccupations are truth and the elusiveness of intimacy, and from such preoccupations emerge this patient, beautiful, exposure of loss, and the price of the pursuit of perfection.”

The judges this year were:
? Jane Koustas, currently serving as the Craig Dobbin Professor of Canadian Studies at UCD.
? Mary O’Donnell, poet, novelist, translator and critic.
? Andrew O’Hagan, whose first novel, Our Fathers was shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, among other awards and was winner of the Holtby Prize for Fiction.
? Paulo Ruffilli, poet and novelist, is general editor of the Edizioni del Leone in Venice.
? Eugene R.Sullivan, non voting chair is a former Chief Judge of a US Court of Appeals.

Colm Tóibín is the author of four novels, The South, The Heather Blazing, The Story of the Night and The Blackwater Lightship, which was shortlisted for the 1999 Booker Prize and the 2001 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. His non-fiction includes Bad Blood, Homage to Barcelona, The Sign of the Cross and Love in a Dark Time. Colm Tóibín is now a Stein Visiting Writer at Stanford University, USA.

The Master was nominated by 17 Libraries; State Library of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia, State Library of Queensland, Brisbane, Tweebronnen Openbare Bibliotheek, Leuven, Belgium, Biblioteca Luis Angel Arango, Bogota, Colombia, Cork City Libraries, Ireland, Dublin City Public Libraries, Ireland, Limerick City Library, Ireland, Dunedin Public Libraries, New Zealand, Edinburgh City Libraries & Information Services, Scotland, Cape Town Central Library, South Africa, Public Library of Cincinnati & Hamilton Country, Cincinnati, USA, Hartford Public Library, USA, Kansas City Public Library, USA, Minneapolis Public Library, USA, Free Library of Philadelphia, USA, San José Public Library, USA, Lincoln Library, Springfield, USA

Previous winners of the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award are
2005 The Known World by Edward P Jones.
2004 This Blinding Absence of Light by Tahar Ben Jelloun
2003 My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk
2002 Atomised by Michel Houellebecq
2001 No Great Mischief by Alistair MacLeod
2000 Wide Open by Nicola Barker
1999 Ingenious Pain by Andrew Miller
1998 The Land Of Green Plums by Herta Muller
1997 A Heart So White by Javier Marias
1996 Remembering Babylon by David Malouf

Read more about Colm Tóibín