Irish Novel of The Year · 2024

About

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Short (55 words)

From Ireland, Darragh McKeon is the author of two bestselling novels. His debut ‘All that is Solid Melts into Air was a New York Times Editor’s Choice and in France won the LIRE prize for best international debut. His second novel ‘Remembrance Sunday’ received the prestigious 2024 Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year award. [darraghmckeon.com]

Standard (121 words)

Now based in the west of Ireland after several years in London and New York, Darragh McKeon spent most of his twenties as a theatre director, working in several of the world’s leading production houses – Steppenwolf in Chicago, The Young Vic and The Royal Court in London. In 2014, his debut novel ‘All That is Solid Melts into Air’ was translated into nine languages and published in twenty countries. It was a New York Times Editor’s Choice and in France was awarded the LIRE Prize for best international debut. His second novel ‘Remembrance Sunday’ was awarded the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year in 2024. His debut feature film Akhirah is currently in post-production and is due for release in 2025. [darraghmckeon.com]

In the introduction to her collection Paris Stories, Mavis Gallant writes that as a child she talked to herself constantly, an ongoing and somewhat limitless stream of muted language that cascaded from her mouth and continued well into adulthood. It was a long forgotten aspect of her childhood that emerged only in reflection, towards the end of her life, when she realised that this habit was actually a practice of refinement, an unconsidered honing of her narrative voice.

When I read this, I had one of those ‘ah, ok’ moments and realised that a continent away, and decades later, I was doing the same thing. As a child, people would overhear my conversations with myself and feel compelled to dip into them or contradict or silence these inclinations. As a teenager, people would turn heads as I’d whip past them on a bike in full conversational mode, and all the way through my twenties, I’d recount the minutae of day or my problems, or my intentions, to a dinner table of my close friends, which could be instantly transported to whatever corner of the globe I happened to be inhabiting at the time.
Coming of age in Ireland in the 1990s, was to emerge into a country that was still firmly gripped by the iron clasp of Catholic orthodoxy. So it makes sense that my speech patterns, thought patterns, my verbal rambles, were all practiced internally, that I achieved a kind of fluent solitude. A lonely practice perhaps, but one that also imbued me with an appreciation of the multitudinous patterning of words, the web of language being so infinite, so delicate, and ultimately so unbreakable.
Whenever I’m asked why Ireland produces so many writers I point towards the fact that in the 20th century, Ireland rivalled the Soviet Union in the range and number of books it banned. To be Irish is to wade through this cultural heritage, with all of its rich contradictions. We write because we are aware that each sentence on a page is an articulation of a private freedom, one which we can choose, if we are so resolved, to make public.
In this light, maybe there was a certain inevitability that my first book novel was set between Moscow and Ukraine in the late 1980s, and that my second has as its focalpoint a terrorist bombing in Northern Ireland in 1987. My feature film centres around a man defying his religious beliefs, causing harm in order to provide for his loved ones. Silence and authoritarianism, revolution and explosion, the twisted paths that rebellion can take, the compromises that necessity can force upon us. These themes, so far, have been my patch of narrative earth, all of them derived no doubt from the time and place in which I emerged.

See media and event bios below

Short (55 words)

From Ireland, Darragh McKeon is the author of two bestselling novels. His debut ‘All that is Solid Melts into Air was a New York Times Editor’s Choice and in France won the LIRE prize for best international debut. His second novel ‘Remembrance Sunday’ received the prestigious 2024 Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year award. [darraghmckeon.com]

Standard (121 words)

Now based in the west of Ireland after several years in London and New York, Darragh McKeon spent most of his twenties as a theatre director, working in several of the world’s leading production houses – Steppenwolf in Chicago, The Young Vic and The Royal Court in London. In 2014, his debut novel ‘All That is Solid Melts into Air’ was translated into nine languages and published in twenty countries. It was a New York Times Editor’s Choice and in France was awarded the LIRE Prize for best international debut. His second novel ‘Remembrance Sunday’ was awarded the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year in 2024. His debut feature film Akhirah is currently in post-production and is due for release in 2025. [darraghmckeon.com]

About

See media and event bios below

Short (55 words)

From Ireland, Darragh McKeon is the author of two bestselling novels. His debut ‘All that is Solid Melts into Air was a New York Times Editor’s Choice and in France won the LIRE prize for best international debut. His second novel ‘Remembrance Sunday’ received the prestigious 2024 Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year award. [darraghmckeon.com]

Standard (121 words)

Now based in the west of Ireland after several years in London and New York, Darragh McKeon spent most of his twenties as a theatre director, working in several of the world’s leading production houses – Steppenwolf in Chicago, The Young Vic and The Royal Court in London. In 2014, his debut novel ‘All That is Solid Melts into Air’ was translated into nine languages and published in twenty countries. It was a New York Times Editor’s Choice and in France was awarded the LIRE Prize for best international debut. His second novel ‘Remembrance Sunday’ was awarded the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year in 2024. His debut feature film Akhirah is currently in post-production and is due for release in 2025. [darraghmckeon.com]

In the introduction to her collection Paris Stories, Mavis Gallant writes that as a child she talked to herself constantly, an ongoing and somewhat limitless stream of muted language that cascaded from her mouth and continued well into adulthood. It was a long forgotten aspect of her childhood that emerged only in reflection, towards the end of her life, when she realised that this habit was actually a practice of refinement, an unconsidered honing of her narrative voice.
When I read this, I had one of those ‘ah, ok’ moments and realised that a continent away, and decades later, I was doing the same thing. As a child, people would overhear my conversations with myself and feel compelled to dip into them or contradict or silence these inclinations. As a teenager, people would turn heads as I’d whip past them on a bike in full conversational mode, and all the way through my twenties, I’d recount the minutae of day or my problems, or my intentions, to a dinner table of my close friends, which could be instantly transported to whatever corner of the globe I happened to be inhabiting at the time.
Coming of age in Ireland in the 1990s, was to emerge into a country that was still firmly gripped by the iron clasp of Catholic orthodoxy. So it makes sense that my speech patterns, thought patterns, my verbal rambles, were all practiced internally, that I achieved a kind of fluent solitude. A lonely practice perhaps, but one that also imbued me with an appreciation of the multitudinous patterning of words, the web of language being so infinite, so delicate, and ultimately so unbreakable.
Whenever I’m asked why Ireland produces so many writers I point towards the fact that in the 20th century, Ireland rivalled the Soviet Union in the range and number of books it banned. To be Irish is to wade through this cultural heritage, with all of its rich contradictions. We write because we are aware that each sentence on a page is an articulation of a private freedom, one which we can choose, if we are so resolved, to make public.
In this light, maybe there was a certain inevitability that my first book novel was set between Moscow and Ukraine in the late 1980s, and that my second has as its focalpoint a terrorist bombing in Northern Ireland in 1987. My feature film centres around a man defying his religious beliefs, causing harm in order to provide for his loved ones. Silence and authoritarianism, revolution and explosion, the twisted paths that rebellion can take, the compromises that necessity can force upon us. These themes, so far, have been my patch of narrative earth, all of them derived no doubt from the time and place in which I emerged.

See media and event
bios below

Short (55 words)

From Ireland, Darragh McKeon is the author of two bestselling novels. His debut ‘All that is Solid Melts into Air was a New York Times Editor’s Choice and in France won the LIRE prize for best international debut. His second novel ‘Remembrance Sunday’ received the prestigious 2024 Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year award. [darraghmckeon.com]

Standard (121 words)

Now based in the west of Ireland after several years in London and New York, Darragh McKeon spent most of his twenties as a theatre director, working in several of the world’s leading production houses – Steppenwolf in Chicago, The Young Vic and The Royal Court in London. In 2014, his debut novel ‘All That is Solid Melts into Air’ was translated into nine languages and published in twenty countries. It was a New York Times Editor’s Choice and in France was awarded the LIRE Prize for best international debut. His second novel ‘Remembrance Sunday’ was awarded the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year in 2024. His debut feature film Akhirah is currently in post-production and is due for release in 2025. [darraghmckeon.com]