McBride and McCormack contend the €100k Dublin award

Two Irish novels, from Eimear McBride and Mike McCormack, and six novels in translation, including from Han Kang and Deborah Smith, have been shortlisted for the €100,000 2018 International Dublin Literary Award.

The 10-strong shortlist is the product of nominations of invited public libraries around the world, in Canada, Estonia, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Norway, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland and the USA. Last year the winning novel was A General Theory of Oblivion by José Eduardo Agualusa, translated from the Portuguese by Daniel Hahn, which saw €75,000 awarded to the book's author and €25,000 to the translator. 

Eimear McBride is shortlisted for her second novel The Lesser Bohemians (Faber & Faber), the story of a relationship between an 18-year-old drama student, recently arrived in London from Ireland, and an older actor, while Mike McCormack is shortlisted for his experimental novel Solar Bones (Tramp Press). Written in a single novel-length sentence, Solar Bones also won the Goldsmiths Prize in 2016.

On the shortlist from Penguin Random House's stables are My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout (Penguin), a book currently being adapted for the stage, and The Woman Next Door by Yewande Omotoso (Chatto & Windus).

From the same author-translator team which won the Man Booker International Prize in 2016, Han and Smith are shortlisted for Human Acts (Portobello Books), a book which is already a controversial bestseller in South Korea. It centres on the 1980 Gwangju Uprising and, through multiple perspectives, gives a voice to both victims and survivors. The author and translator are also currently in the running on the longlist for 2018's Man Booker International Prize for another book, The White Book (Portobello Books).

This year, as well as from South Korea, there is fiction in translation on the shortlist from France, Germany, Italy, Norway and Mexico: Ladivine by Marie Ndiaye, translated from French by Jordan Stump (MacLehose Press); Baba Dunja’s Last Love by Ukrainian German author Alina Bronsky, translated from the German by Tim Mohr (Europa Editions); Distant Light by Antonio Moresco, translated from Italian by Richard Dixon (Archipelago Books); The Unseen by Roy Jacobsen, translated from Norwegian by Don Bartlett and Don Shaw (MacLehose Press); and The Transmigration of Bodies by Yuri Herrera, translated from the Spanish by Lisa Dillman (And Other Stories).

Lord Mayor, Ardmhéara, Mícheál Mac Donncha, Patron of the Award, said the "beauty of this award" was shown in the way "it reaches out to readers and authors worldwide, while also celebrating excellence in contemporary Irish literature".  

An international judging panel of five members, chaired by Hon. Eugene R. Sullivan, will now select one winner which will the Lord Mayor will announce on 13th June.