Dublin International Literary Award 2026 Shortlist

by Ocean Vuong

€16.14

THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'Heartbreaking, heartwarming yet unsentimental, and savagely comic' Guardian 'Some of the most beautiful writing I've experienced in my lifetime' Oprah Winfrey READERS ARE OBSESSED WITH THE EMPEROR OF GLADNESS: 'Read it slowly. Let it wreck you. Then read it again' 'I feel like I lost part of my soul to this book' 'I would give it 6 stars if I could' 'Sad and funny, devastating and quietly celebratory' 'A masterwork of compassion and complexity' College dropout Hai doesn't know how to face the future until a chance meeting with elderly widow Grazina changes his life. One summer evening in the town of East Gladness, Connecticut, nineteen-year-old Hai stands on a bridge, ready to jump, when he hears someone shout across the river. The voice belongs to Grazina, an elderly widow succumbing to dementia. Over the course of the year, the unlikely pair develops a life-altering bond. When Hai takes a job at a diner to support himself and Grazina, his fellow workers become the family he didn't expect to find. United by desperation and circumstance, and existing on the fringes of society, together they bear witness to each other's survival. This is an unforgettable story of unexpected friendship and how far people go to find a second chance. 'The first millennial Great American Novel' ArtReview 'His most vivid, ambitious work yet' Dazed 'This stunning book moved me so much' CAITRÍONA BALFE 'A poetic, dramatic and vivid story' COLM TÓIBÍN

by Éric Chacour

€12.99

Cairo, 1980s. Tarek's whole life is laid out for him. A doctor like his father, he has taken over the family medical practice, married his childhood sweetheart and is well respected in society. When he opens a clinic in a disadvantaged area of the city, he meets Ali, a young man who is free from the societal pressures that govern Tarek's life. This chance encounter will change everything, throwing Tarek's marriage, career and his entire existence into question.

by Laurent Binet

€11.99

*LONGLISTED FOR THE DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD 2026* 'There is no living writer whose new books I fall on with greater delight than Laurent Binet. . . Perspectives is a proper treat' Naomi Alderman 'A dazzling romp' Guardian Florence,1557. As dawn breaks, a painter is discovered lying on the floor of a church, stabbed through the heart. Above him, the paintings he laboured over for more than a decade. At his home, a hidden portrait scandalously depicting Maria de Medici, daughter of the Duke of Florence, as a naked Venus. Who is the murderer? Who made the painting? As the city erupts in chaos, Giorgio Vasari, the great art historian, is picked to lead the investigation. Letters fly back and forth carrying news of plots and speculation about the killer's identity - between Maria and her aunt Catherine de' Medici, the queen of France; between Catherine and her secret agents; and between Vasari and his friend Michelangelo. And the truth, when it comes to light, is as shocking as the bold new artworks that have made Florence the red-hot centre of Europe. Bursting with characters and colour, Perspectives is a mystery like no other that shows us Renaissance Florence as we've never seen it before - a dazzling, hugely entertaining novel of court machinations, murder and art. 'Doesn't get much better than this' Sunday Telegraph 'A racy and enjoyable detective story' The Times 'A dazzling romp' Guardian 'Funny and very gripping' Financial Times

by Ali Smith

€11.99

'Miraculous . . . tender, hilarious and ultimately uplifting. A ray of hope' Paul Murray, Irish Times Once upon a time, not very far from now, two children come home to find a line of wet red paint round the outside of their house . . . So begins the freewheeling and urgent new novel from Ali Smith - the story of two young people and a horse called Gliff, on the run from history as it takes a turn for the worse. 'A voice that moves with lightness and precision, where bravery and goodness triumph in spirit over jeopardy and fear' Financial Times 'One of Smith's most propulsive stories - a dark adventure with high stakes, which is still a sparklingly crisp read. A new Ali Smith book is always an event' Holly Williams, i 'Ali Smith's marvellous Gliff considers the complexities of our present moment and the thorny, bridling potential of possible futures with wit, care and craft. A masterpiece of storytelling about storytelling, exploring the delighting, dangerous power of language and connectivity' Eley Williams SHORTLISTED FOR THE GORDON BOWKER VOLCANO PRIZE 2025 SHORTLISTED FOR THE HIGHLAND BOOK PRIZE 2024 LONGLISTED FOR THE DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD 2026

by Brigitte Giraud

€15.95

Winner of the Prix Goncourt A powerful autobiographical novel of loss, the incandescent love that remains, and the small decisions that define the course of fatePaced and structured with the inevitable suspense of a countdown, Brigitte Giraud's tense and haunting novel follows one woman's quest to comprehend the motorcycle accident that took the life of her partner Claude at age 41.The narrator of Live Fast recounts the chain of events that led up to the fateful accident, tracing the tiny, maddening twists of fate that might have prevented its tragic outcome. Each chapter asks the rhetorical question, "what if," departing from an image or memory from early years in Algeria during the war, to moving to the suburbs of Lyon, buying and renovating a home where they could "put down their suitcase for a whole life." A sensitive elegy to her husband and a subtle, precise vision of a lasting love, Live Fast is a moving and electrifying portrait of two people caught up in the mundane activities of life, forgetting that living itself can be dangerous.

by Magdalena BlazeviGc

€13.99

In Late Summer is written from the perspective of a 14-year-old girl killed in the August 1993 massacre in Bosnia. When a picturesque village is caught in the turmoil of war, the entire worlds of girls Ivana and Dunja and their families is blown up and swept away. Based on a personal experience, Magdalena Blazevic's novel is poetic and powerful, full of images of ordinary country life as well as the brutality of war. This is a haunting portrait of a family and a village, each affected differently by the daily realities of civil war. Compared by critics to Ingeborg Bachmann, Blazevic weaves emotion under the surface of her precise and lyrical prose.