McCormack’s Solar Bones wins €100k Dublin International Literary Award

Mike McCormack’s Solar Bones (Tramp Press) has won the €100,000 2018 Dublin International Literary Award, formerly known as the IMPAC Award.

The judges hailed the book "formally ambitious, stylistically dauntless and linguistically spirited", declaring it "a novel of extraordinary assurance and scope".

Written in a single novel-length sentence, Solar Bones has already scooped accolades including the Goldsmiths Prize, and the Novel of the Year and Book of the Year awards at the Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards, as well as being longlisted for the Man Booker Prize.

McCormack called it "a wonderful honour" for Solar Bones to have been chosen "from such a wealth of world literature". The prize is the world’s largest for a single novel published in English, based on nominations of invited public libraries around the world in Canada, Estonia, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Norway, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland and the USA.

Lisa Coen, publisher at Tramp Press, commented: "We are thrilled to see Mike McCormack's extraordinary novel receive this important award. Solar Bones is an incredible book, and Mike is a great writer, teacher, and GAA fanatic, so it is fitting he should be celebrated with an award chosen by readers."

Tramp Press' Sarah Davis-Goff added: "Mike McCormack is one of the world’s greatest living writers, and Solar Bones is a masterpiece. This recognition for his work is so wonderful and we could not be more delighted for him."

After the initial publication of Solar Bones in 2016, Tramp Press partnered with Canongate in the UK to ensure it would be submitted for the Man Booker Prize. It has also been published in the US with Soho Press. Rights have also sold, via Mike’s agent Marianne Gunn O’Connor, to Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Greece and Holland.