GRACE shortlisted for France’s Prix Littérature Monde (World Literature Prize)

GRACE has been shortlisted for the Prix Littérature Monde (World Literature Prize) in France. Huge thanks to the remarkable work of my translator Marina Boraso, and my publishing team at Albin Michel. The shortlist is (with translated titles as they are in French): • Jamey Bradbury, Wild , trad. Jacques Mailhos (Gallmeister) • Paul Lynch, Grace, trans. Marina Boraso (Albin Michel) • Francesca Melandri, All, Except Me, trad. Danièle Valin (Gallimard) • Jeroen Olyslaegers, Trouble, trans. Françoise Antoine (Stock) • Ron Rash, A Brutal Silence (Gallimard)

GRACE nominated for French European book prize

GRACE has been nominated in France for thePrix Jean Monnet de Littérature Européenne 2019 and the Grand Prix de L’Héroïne 2019. The book was published last month to whopping acclaim and here are just some of the things the national press in France, Belgium and Switzerland have been saying:

“An epic book of black splendour” — Le Monde 

“Paul Lynch is one of today’s greatest Irish writers” — Libération

“Lynch is an immense talent with a haunting style that is as poignant as it is dazzling…. “This life is light,” writes the author at the end of the book. His novel too. — Le Figaro

Grace is an epic fresco, a picaresque novel as much as a stirring coming-of-age story…. reminiscent of the apocalyptic landscapes of Cormac McCarthy, the lyrical desolation of William Faulkner and the collapsing language of Samuel Beckett. — La Vie.

Paul Lynch probes the heart of the human condition with flamboyant lyricism. With only three novels, he is already an inimitable voice — an hallucinatory realism with an incantatory, hypnotic prose…. — Le Temps, Switzerland.

“A masterly work, at once a coming-of-age novel, intimate, social and historical. A work that digs the human psyche and that of a country” — Le Soir, Belgium

“Incantatory and magical” — Les Echos

Grace wins Kerry Group Irish Book of the Year 2018

Grace has won the €15,000 Kerry Group Irish Book of the Year. At the opening night of Listowel Writers’ Week in Kerry, adjudicators Jane Urquhart and Alex Preston chose it from a shortlist that included Frank McGuinness’s The Woodcutter and His Family, Lisa Harding’s Harvesting, Bernard MacLaverty’s Midwinter Break and Sally Rooney’s Conversations with Friends.

In her awarding of the prize, judge Jane Urquhart spoke of fellow judge Alex Preston’s remarks about the book: “It’s clear that Grace is something quite breathtakingly brilliant and new. Lynch’s great skill is to give us a story so moving, compelling and gripping written in a style that pushes the language to breaking point. I can’t remember a book colouring my experience of the world in the way Grace has done —my copy is thick with underlinings. This is a major work of fiction by a writer of quite extraordinary skill. I’m delighted that by giving the book the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award, we’ll be bringing it to a much wider audience.”

The paperback of Grace is now out.