O’Neill wins Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award 2009

Netherland by Joseph O'Neill

Irish author wins €15,000 prize

1 June 2009

Man Booker Prize 2008 longlisted author Joseph O'Neill has won the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award 2009 for Netherland.

O'Neill scooped the main €15,000 prize on the opening night of the Listowel Writers Week Festival.  The award was presented by actor Gabriel Byrne.

The New York Times said Netherland was 'the wittiest, angriest, most exacting and most desolate work of fiction we've yet had about life in New York and London after the World Trade Centre fell.  On a micro level, ir's about a couple and their young son living in Lower Manhattan when the planes hit...On a macro level, it's about nearly everything.'

The author was born in Ireland, raised in the Netherlands and has lived in New York for the last ten years.

Other authors on the shortlist were Sebastian Barry, who was also longlisted for last year's Man Booker prize for The Secret Scripture, Deirdre Madden, Hugo Hamilton and Peter Murphy.

The Man Booker Prize Fiction at its finest