Joseph O’Connor’s highly acclaimed novel MY FATHER’S HOUSE has been longlisted for the 2024 Dublin Literary Award.
The Dublin Literary Award is one of the world’s most significant literary prizes, with a prize of €100,000 for the winner. Its aim is to promote excellence in world literature and its longlist is decided by libraries throughout the world, with titles nominated on the basis of ‘high literary merit’. Other titles longlisted for the 2024 award include BIRNAM WOOD by Eleanor Catton, DEMON COPPERHEAD by Barbara Kingsolver and IF I SURVIVE YOU by Jonathan Escoffery. You can see the full longlist here.
The shortlist will be announced in March 2024, with the overall winner revealed in a ceremony during the International Literature Festival Dublin in May.
An Irish No.1 bestseller, MY FATHER’S HOUSE was shortlisted for the Eason Novel of the Year Award at the 2023 An Post Irish Book Awards (with Joseph shortlisted for the Library Association of Ireland Author of the Year Award at the same awards). It was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 Book at Bedtime in January 2023 and was picked by Jo Brand as a favourite title on BBC’s Between the Covers television programme last November. It’s also been selected as a 2023 Book of the Year by Fintan O’Toole, Colm Tóibín and Sarah Gilmartin in The Irish Times and many other publications such as The Washington Post.
MY FATHER’S HOUSE was first published in the UK and Ireland by Harvill Secker and in the US by Europa Editions in January 2023, with the paperback publication to come in the UK in February 2024 and in the US in April 2024. Translation rights have been sold in Brazil, France, Germany, Italy and Sweden, and film rights are under option.
Based on the true story of an Irish priest in the Vatican helping escaped prisoners evade capture in Nazi-occupied Rome, MY FATHER’S HOUSE is a powerful literary thriller from a master of historical fiction. Joseph O’Connor has created an unforgettable novel of love, faith and sacrifice, and what it means to be truly human in extreme circumstances.
Joseph is currently writing the second novel in the Escape Line trilogy (of which MY FATHER’S HOUSE is the first), which is due to be published by Harvill Secker in the UK and Europa in the UK in 2025.
Photo credit: Urszula Soltys
About Joseph O’Connor
Joseph O’Connor was born in Dublin, where he still lives. MY FATHER’S HOUSE is his tenth novel: he is also the author of film scripts, radio and stage plays, two collections of short stories, and several bestselling works of non-fiction.
2022 was the 20th anniversary of Joseph O’Connor’s novel STAR OF THE SEA which was an international bestseller, selling more than a million copies in the UK alone and being published in 38 languages. It won France’s Prix Millepages, Italy’s Premio Acerbi, the Irish Post Award for Fiction, the Nielsen Bookscan Golden Book Award, an American Library Association Award, the Hennessy/Sunday Tribune Hall of Fame Award, and the Prix Litteraire Zepter for European Novel of the Year.
He holds an honorary Doctorate in Literature from University College Dublin and received the Irish PEN Award for Outstanding Contribution to Irish Literature in 2012. He is the Inaugural Frank McCourt Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Limerick.
Praise for MY FATHER’S HOUSE
‘A masterwork... so urgent, so incredibly alive... A searing and beautiful example of storytelling's infinite importance, to our humanness, to our chances of learning from our most terrible and our most transcendent moments, and all our moments in between, to hold all life sacred, to see each other as brothers and sisters, to love and protect each other. No wonder he is so cherished and loved by his countless devotees across the earth. He is a national and international treasure, the most generous and noble of writers, a true master of the art.’ – Donal Ryan
‘A spectacular, thrilling novel… MY FATHER’S HOUSE celebrates triumphant against-the-odds camaraderie. It would require a present-day Puccini to do operatic justice to its tremendous tale.’ – Peter Kemp, The Sunday Times
‘This is a literary thriller of the highest order. The incarnation of O’Flaherty, the Irish Oskar Schindler, is sublime. What often elevates a writer is compassion, and O’Connor has it in spades – paying tribute to the courage of those who resist tyranny. Beautifully crafted, his razor-sharp dialogue is to be savoured, and he employs dark humour to great effect. The plot twists keep on coming until the novel’s coda, where a final joyful conceit is revealed.’ – Lucy Popescu, The Observer
‘Joseph O’Connor’s new novel MY FATHERS HOUSE is a riveting tale about the power of community in the face of unfathomable evil… a seamless blend of fact and fiction by a master of the genre; a brisk polyphonic narrative that brings the heroism of ordinary people thrillingly to life... O’Connor is a visualist who revels in evocative cityscapes of a Rome under siege… readers will be too caught up in O’Connor’s writing, the delight in watching a plan come together, the tension of wondering whether it will succeed… MY FATHER’S HOUSE, the first in a trilogy, is a novel full of deft characterisation and knowledge, not just the historical facts, but the broader – grander? – wisdom to be found in excavating the past.’ – Sarah Gilmartin, The Irish Times
‘O’Connor’s priest goes on to steal many more scenes by showing not just the courage of his convictions but also courage under fire. The result is a gripping World War II-set drama featuring the unlikeliest of heroes, one whom the reader roots for every step of the way… His cat-and-mouse game with Hauptmann is expertly plotted; his desperate mission through the streets of Rome is brilliantly paced. It is hard not to be captivated by his presence throughout this hugely satisfying book, from its explosive opening to its bittersweet end.’ – Malcolm Forbes, The Washington Post
Visit Joseph’s website
