An Post Irish Book Awards 2022: This year’s winners revealed

Novel of the year, nonfiction book of the year and 16 other winners have been announced. All now compete for the book of the year award

Two books that eloquently and movingly communicate the human cost of social breakdown and political failure have won the headline prizes at this year’s An Post Irish Book Awards, which were held at Convention Centre Dublin this evening.

My Fourth Time, We Drowned, by Sally Hayden, an investigation of the migrant crisis in north Africa and the West’s complicity in the maltreatment of refugees, was named nonfiction book of the year. Sally Rooney called the book, which has also won the Orwell Prize and Michael Déon Prize and been shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize, “the most important work of contemporary reporting I have ever read”.

Sally Hayden’s heart-stopping account of the plight of contemporary refugees is both a compelling epic and an intimate encounter with exact personal experience

“Sally Hayden’s heart-stopping account of the plight of contemporary refugees is both a compelling epic and an intimate encounter with exact personal experience. She achieves what all great writing hopes to do: the restoration of humanity to those who have been deprived of it,” said the Irish Times columnist Fintan O’Toole, a fellow winner of the Orwell Prize. Hayden reports from Africa for The Irish Times. My Fourth Time, We Drowned is her first book.

Trespasses, by Louise Kennedy, a shattering, blistering portrait of North Ireland at the height of the Troubles, with at its heart the doomed, tender and erotic love story of Cushla, a young Catholic teacher, and Michael, an older, married, left-wing Protestant barrister, won novel of the year. Kennedy’s debut short-story collection, The End of the World Is a Cul-de-Sac, won the John McGahern Prize for debut Irish fiction earlier this year. Trespasses is the first novel by Kennedy, a former chef who lives in Sligo and is originally from Holywood, Co Down.

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“There are shades of John McGahern in Kennedy’s surgical decomposition of coincidence and its deathly operations, and of Ciaran Carson, the laureate of Belfast’s otherwise invisible cities,” Nicholas Allen wrote in his Irish Times review. “And it is hard too not to think of Anna Burns’s masterpiece, Milkman, as the nervous system to Kennedy’s bodily Trespasses.”

Alice Ryan won the newcomer of the year award for her novel, There’s Been a Little Incident. She is the daughter of the late Irish Times literary editor Caroline Walsh and the writer James Ryan. The arts journalist Edel Coffey won crime fiction book of the year for her debut novel, Breaking Point, while Marian Keyes won the award for popular fiction book of the year, for Again, Rachel, the sequel to her bestselling Rachel’s Holiday.

The Olympic boxing champion Kellie Harrington won sports book of the year for her memoir, Kellie, written with Roddy Doyle. The RTÉ reporter Charlie Bird, with Ray Burke, won biography of the year for Time and Tide. The Gutter Bookshop owner, Bob Johnston, won junior children’s book of the year for Our Big Day, illustrated by Michael Emberley. The footballer turned psychotherapist Richie Sadlier won the prize for teen and young adult book of the year for Let’s Talk.

Anne Enright, the inaugural laureate for Irish fiction, from 2015 to 2018, was presented with the Bob Hughes Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of a literary career spanning seven novels, three short-story collections, a memoir of motherhood and the 2007 Booker Prize, which she won for her fourth novel, The Gathering.

“Books represent the best of us as a nation,” David McRedmond, chief executive of An Post, said: “An Post is very proud to be associated with the Irish Book Awards. It’s wonderful to celebrate such great writers, illustrators, poets and bookshops from across the island. I congratulate the winners and all those who were shortlisted.”

Some wonderful books have been published this year, many by established literary stars but also by an astonishing number of talented newcomers who seem to spring fully formed on to the Irish literary scene every year

Brendan Corbett, chairperson of the awards, said: “Our industry has worked so hard to grow the awards from something quite small into the behemoth it has become today, and we are immensely proud of what we’ve achieved through a broad coalition of readers, writers, publishers, sponsors, booksellers and librarians.

“Some wonderful books have been published this year, many by established literary stars but also by an astonishing number of talented newcomers who seem to spring fully formed on to the Irish literary scene every year.”

The overall prize for Irish book of the year 2022 will be revealed in a one-hour special, hosted by Oliver Callan, on RTÉ One on December 7th.

An Post Irish Book Awards 2022: The winners

Novel of the year

Trespasses by Louise Kennedy

Best Irish-published book of the year

An Irish Folklore Treasury by John Creedon

Nonfiction book of the year

My Fourth Time, We Drowned by Sally Hayden

Lifestyle book of the year

An Irish Atlantic Rainforest: A Personal Journey into the Magic of Rewilding by Eoghan Daltun

Cookbook of the year

The Daly Dish: Bold Food Made Good by Gina and Karol Daly

Sports book of the year

Kellie by Kellie Harrington, with Roddy Doyle

Biography of the year

Time and Tide by Charlie Bird, with Ray Burke

Children’s book of the year: junior

Our Big Day by Bob Johnston, illustrated by Michael Emberley

Children’s book of the year: senior

Girls Who Slay Monsters by Ellen Ryan, illustrated by Shona Shirley Macdonald

Teen and young adult book of the year

Let’s Talk by Richie Sadlier

Irish bookshop of the year

Bridge Street Books, Wicklow

Irish language book of the year

EL by Thaddeus Ó Buachalla

Poem of the year

Wedding Dress by Martina Dalton

Short story of the year

This Small Giddy Life by Nuala O’Connor

Crime fiction book of the year

Breaking Point by Edel Coffey

Popular fiction book of the year

Again, Rachel by Marian Keyes

Newcomer of the year

There’s Been a Little Incident by Alice Ryan

Author of the year

John Boyne

Martin Doyle

Martin Doyle

Martin Doyle is Books Editor of The Irish Times
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