After receiving entries from libraries all over the world, the organisers of the International Dublin Literary Award have revealed their 2020 longlist of 156 books.
Talking about the longlist announced on November 11, 2019, the City Librarian Mairead Owens said, “This great prize affirms Dublin’s commitment to international writers and translators, to literature and creativity. Through this award, Dublin, a UNESCO City of Literature, brings the worldwide community of readers together to read the works of contemporary writers from all corners of the world.”
The longlist includes “My Sister, the Serial Killer” by Nigeria’s very own Oyinkan Braithwaite. She is featured alongside South African novelist Nozizwe Cynthia Jele, author of “The Ones with Purpose.”
Braithwaite’s thriller tells the story of a Nigerian woman whose younger sister has a very inconvenient habit of killing her boyfriends.
The New York Times describes it as a “Pulpy, peppery and sinister, served up in a comic deadpan…This scorpion-tailed little thriller leaves a response, and a sting, you will remember.”
Nobel Prize winners — “Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead” by Olga Tokarczuk, Nobel Prize in Literature 2018, and “The Great Fall” by Peter Handke, Nobel Prize for Literature 2019, also make the longlist.
The shortlist will be revealed d on April 2, 2020, before the winner is announced on June 10, 2020.
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